


Data Hazmat Squad

by IronLucario2012



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Savers | Digimon Data Squad
Genre: And give the BioHybrid Squad some character, BioHybrids, Dub names, Except for moves and stuff where the dub doesn't have names for them, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Kurata is a heartless bastard, Self-Insert, Starts out darker than canon, Trying to keep the new Digimon to a minimum, Unwilling Villain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2020-11-02 11:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronLucario2012/pseuds/IronLucario2012
Summary: Jack Sato falls into the world of Digimon Data Squad, gets forcibly inducted into the BioHybrid program, and tries to not make things worse.Whether he succeeds depends on your definition of 'worse'.





	1. Setting the Stage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is also being posted on the Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity forums.

The lecture was almost over, but I hadn’t paid much attention. Everyone knew Mrs. Feynman taught by reading straight from the book and her tests were the same every year. The only reason anyone showed up to these lectures was because she gave marks for attendance.  
  
The clock ticked past the hour and half a dozen alarms went off across the lecture hall, more than a few people waking up with a start before realising where they were. Mrs. Feynman shouted over the din of over a hundred students packing up and leaving at once. “Don’t forget, there’s a test on this chapter tomorrow morning, so make sure you turn up at 10AM sharp or you’ll be locked out and lose thirty percent of your final grade!”  
  
“We get it, we get it. It’s not like you haven’t been telling us about it for the past two weeks.” I muttered on my way out of the hall.  
  
“You say that, Jack, but you just know there’s going to be some idiot that’s going to show up five minutes late claiming they didn’t know there was a test.”  
  
I turned as Owen, one of my friends, caught up with me with a shit-eating grin.  
  
“Or maybe _someone_ will show up halfway through the test because they stayed up all night watching anime and slept through their alarm.”  
  
At that, I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to show up halfway through the test, Owen. I know better than that.”  
  
Owen nodded, still grinning. “But of course! You wouldn’t even bother to turn up, since you’d know you wouldn’t be let in! Truly a sign of great genius!”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure you know where you can shove your opinions by this point.”  
  
Despite my tone, I was grinning. I had a whole evening free of responsibility, a cupboard full of junk food, and a Digimon season to marathon.  
  


* * *

  
The weather was overcast and it looked like there would be heavy rain later on. Perfect weather, considering I wasn’t even planning on leaving my room, let alone the apartment building.  
  
I let out a sigh of contentment as I settled back into my chair, set my first bag of popcorn and my hot chocolate on my desk, and hit play.  
  
‘_[Tafu na Haato! Nandodemo tatakau to...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itaoOfHVpio)'_  
  


* * *

  
“Ugh...”  
  
I groaned as a ray of sunlight hit my face through a hole in my blinds. I wasn’t sure when I’d fallen asleep, but I knew I hadn’t finished the season or I’d have been in bed rather than my chair.  
  
“Just great.” I frowned as I got up and headed for the bathroom to shower. “Something’s odd here...”  
  
I undressed and got in the shower, and was about to turn on the water when I paled and let out a strangled whine.  
  
“_My window faces west...”_  
  
I ran back out and checked my phone to see just how late I’d slept in, only to get incredibly confused at what I saw.  
  
It was apparently 8:37 in the morning. Not only that, all of the text on my phone’s screen was in Japanese, and my background had changed from a playful Guilmon to a velociraptor from one of the Jurassic Park movies.  
  
The weirdest part was that I could understand what the text meant. Not just guessing based on where it was on the screen and what used to be there. My brain took a moment to try to process that and gave up.  
  
Reeling from the revelation that I’d apparently become fluent in written Japanese overnight, I made my way to my window and peeked through the blinds. The view just added to my confusion, especially when I glanced back around at my room. Aside from the language change it was exactly the same as I remembered it last night.  
  
“_So how,”_ I thought, as I looked back out through the blinds, _“am I in the middle of a Japanese city?”  
_

* * *

  
I turned away from the window, simultaneously trying not to think about what was happening and trying to figure it out. Unsurprisingly, this quickly gave me a headache.  
  
I hit the power button on my computer and got dressed in my pyjamas as I waited for it to start up. No sense in putting on clean clothes when you haven’t had a shower yet.  
  
I sighed, resting my face in my hands. “What the hell is going on?"  
  
I frowned with a sinking feeling as I noticed my words sounded odd. Based on the text on my phone, and apparently also my computer and keyboard, I had an idea of why.  
  
I decided to test it with one of the few words that would give a recognisable result if I was right.  
  
“Idiot.” My frown deepened. There was definitely something off. I concentrated this time, trying to listen to the sounds I was making more than the meaning of them.  
  
“Idiot. Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiotidiotidiotidiotidiotidiotidiotbakabakabak-”  
  
I stopped, short of breath after my tirade. _“So I’m automatically speaking Japanese as well then. Can I still speak English?”_  
  
It took some more experimentation, but I found eventually that I could speak English with a noticeable accent by focusing on speaking the correct sounds rather than what I thought of as the correct words directly.  
  
Language issues acknowledged, if not really fixed, I turned to my computer, which had finished starting up a while ago and started poking around to find out what the hell was going on. Again, I froze at a shock, though I recovered faster this time. I seemed to be getting used to them somewhat.  
  
The date was April 8th, 2008.  
  
“_Well, at least I’m not late for the test.”_  
  


* * *

  
I leaned back in my chair, glancing over the results of my search. They were odd, but consistent, much like the entire situation so far.  
  
I was in an alternate world, or divergent timeline, or something like that. That was the only way to explain how my entire family history up to last year had been moved whole cloth from New Hampshire, on the East Coast of the US, to Tokyo, Japan.  
  
I had still gone to University as normal, if in Tokyo, for the first year, but when my parents decided to emigrate – to New Hampshire, funnily enough – I stayed behind to complete my course and then promptly took a gap year, ‘to get used to living on my own’.  
  
Regardless of the reason, the result was that I was a 19-year-old living alone in an apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo, being financially propped up by my parents from overseas while I was between jobs. There were a few interviews scheduled for the middle of May according to my calendar, but nothing until then, which meant I had essentially complete freedom.  
  
Satisfied that I wasn’t going to have some irate boss kicking down my door demanding to know why I wasn’t at work yet, I decided to look up a replacement for my Guilmon wallpapers, which all seemed to have disappeared.  
  


* * *

  
_Normally, when internet searches involving Digimon are made, they are reported to DATS, and a team is sent out with memory-erasers. Fortunately for Jack, Akihiro Kurata had hijacked this program to route all such reports through him pending his approval, as he looked for candidates for his Bio-Hybrid program._  
  
_Even more fortunately, Kurata was busy at that moment, refining his Space Oscillation Device to open over a much larger area while retaining as much of the selective gravity aspect as he could, and would likely not notice the report for some time._  
  


* * *

  
“Okay, there’s definitely something weird... well... weird_er_ going on here.”  
  
When I’d searched for ‘Guilmon Wallpaper’, I got no results. None at all. Same result for ‘Guilmon’, ‘Wikimon’, ‘Digimon’, and anything else Digimon-related I tried. Digimon itself tried to autocorrect to Pokemon, which was really annoying. A quick few searches showed that no other anime I could think of was affected.  
  
“_Maybe... could it be? Am I... _in_ a Digimon universe?”_  
  
I considered the implications, particularly my projected lifespan if I was unlucky, and paled.  
  
“Fuck_, I hope not.”_

* * *

After a brief lie-down to get my thoughts in order again, I went back to my computer to try and narrow down the possibilities.

“Right... so if it’s one of the games I’ve got nothing to work with, same with most of the manga... Can’t be V-Tamer, that had Digimon merchandise in the real world, and I’d have found that if nothing else. Can’t be Tamers for the same reason. Can’t be Adventure, 02, or Tri, since those would have happened ten, six, and two years ago respectively. That leaves... Frontier, Savers and Xros Wars.” I grimace. “Or Hunters, I suppose.”  
  
I lean back in my chair and sigh again. “Pretty sure it’s not Frontier. I seem to recall Zoe having a Wormmon keyring in a flashback. Even if it was, there’s literally nothing I can do to change anything. The only thing that happens in the real world is Shibuya Station getting wrecked by Lucemon, which lasts a few minutes at most. So let’s go with the assumption that it’s not.  
  
“So. Savers, Xros Wars and Hunters. It can’t be Hunters, there’d be video of the final fight or the Tactimon fight online and I’m pretty sure I’d have found it. If it’s Xros Wars it’s pretty early season for the same reason, and like Frontier, there’s nothing I can do about it without a way to the Digital World.  
  
“Which leaves Savers. The one with memory-erasers. The one with the majority of Digimon advocating the extermination of humanity, and the idiots in power in the Human World advocating the annihilation of Digimon, all caused by one cowardly, slippery, xenocidal dick.”  
  
I smile nervously and chuckle. “Or this could just be a normal alternate universe that I’ve wound up in for no real reason. I guess I’ll just have to... wait...”  
  
A thought crosses my mind. An easy way to check if this is Savers. After all, the Digimon may be censored, but the people? The episode with the Kurisarimon had Yoshino appear on plenty of tabloids and magazines, the boxing episode would have made waves when the challenger for the title match stepped down, heck one episode had a freaking _oil tanker_ end up right next to DATS HQ!  
  
A quick set of searches and my face pales as the bottom of my stomach seems to drop out.  
  
“It’s all there... No Digimon in sight, but the tanker that nearly crashed, the boxer that stepped down, the singer that hijacked all the screens in the city, th-they all happened!”  
  
I sit there for a while, in shock that I was actually right about being in a Digimon world, and about how screwed I probably am given what little I remember.  
  
Eventually I notice sirens in the distance, which snaps me out of my reverie.  
  
“R-right... well, that’s the where sorted, now it’s just the when.”  
  
I know the date, but I don’t know how that corresponds to the episodes. I rack my brains for any highly public events that DATS would have had a hard time concealing that I can use as reference points.  
  
On a whim, I glance out of the window again, up at the sky this time.  
  
“Well, there’s no gaping hole to another dimension, so Kurata hasn’t unleashed Belphemon yet...  
  
“What do I remember before that... let’s see, there was the fight with whatshisname, the asshole... BioDarkdramon, and there was Eldradimon out in the bay getting killed with the Gizumon Javelin. Before that... probably DATS HQ getting blown up. Then before that... SaberLeomon’s attack, where Gizumon showed up first, then before that was... Probably the thing with Biyomon reaching Ultimate?”  
  
I know I’m missing most of the episodes, but that should give me enough to get a general idea of when I am. Another few quick searches later, and I discover that the Garudamon vs. RizeGreymon fight was just a few days ago, though I got it from a news video showing Aquilamon attacking a news chopper rather than a video of the fight itself.  
  
“So. I’m probably in the Merukimon Arc somewhere.” I sigh. “Though I get the feeling I’m forgetting [something important](http://digimon.wikia.com/wiki/The_Digimon_Army_Makes_Its_Move)...”


	2. Everything goes to Hell

I had started to go for morning runs through a nearby park. There were quite a few benefits to it, as on top of the obvious ones, it woke me up in the mornings, it allowed me to socialise with the few other people up at this godforsaken hour, it got me used to not sleeping until the evening, and it allowed me to get a better mental picture of my new neighbourhood.  
  
It also made it much easier to tell when I had people following me.  
  
At any other time of day it would have been much harder, and during my evening runs they were nearly invisible, blending into the daytime crowds or the night-time shadows, but in the clear light of dawn on nearly-empty streets, the black-clad obvious agents shadowing me stood out like a sore thumb. I was pretty sure they also had plain-clothes counterparts, but if they did I had yet to notice. Which I guess was the point of going in plain-clothes.  
  
I’d become immensely paranoid once I remembered that DATS was a government organisation, and as such, probably monitored the internet for search terms like mine. It had been a week since then, and I’d been degrading slowly into a nervous wreck for most of it. I wasn’t sure how the neuraliser-knockoffs DATS used would affect me, but I didn’t plan to find out if I could avoid it.  
  
The paranoia had been wearing off a bit since yesterday, though. After all, they obviously knew where I was. If they hadn’t made their move yet, perhaps they were just keeping an eye on me? I wasn’t sure _why_ they’d do that instead of the typical memory-wipe, but I wasn’t going to complain.  
  
I’d been thinking in my spare time of ways to potentially sabotage the Gizumon. They were Kurata’s main anti-Digimon weapon, so anything I managed to come up with to reduce their effectiveness could potentially save lives.  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata smiled. He’d had such good luck recently, after all. A new Gizumon model he was _dying_ to test, and one that he successfully had, a successfully modified Space Oscillation Device, and two promising candidates for the Bio-Hybrid program under surveillance with another two due to start being watched over the next few days._  
  
_And wasn’t it just his luck, that one of them was such a _goldmine_. Kurata hadn’t been able to believe his ears when the candidate, – what was his name again, Jack wasn’t it? - had unwittingly spewed out some of the best ideas Kurata had ever heard in the form of offhand, disconnected remarks as he thought out loud. Sure, some of them were far enough out of his reach now that calling them pipe dreams would be being generous, but one of them, that he had called the Gizumon BASIC, had already proven its worth a thousand times over._  
  
_He had so far been focused entirely on making the Gizumon stronger and tougher, capable of destroying greater and greater Digimon. But that came with a cost, every new model was exorbitantly expensive in terms of the data he could acquire for them._  
  
_These new Gizumon BASIC, on the other hand, went the other way. Making them smaller, lighter, faster. Improving their cameras, their data feeds. Stealth fields, simply not viable on other models of Gizumon due mainly to concerns of size, now not only possible, but practical!_  
  
_Sure their weapons could barely even sting the weaker Digimon, let alone the stronger ones, but that meant nothing when he essentially had camera feeds of all of his enemies’ plans, all of his allies’ operations, EVERYTHING!_  
  
_Kurata’s smile widened to a size not typically found on those of sound mind as he signalled his agents to make sure that Jack would be out on the streets tonight. Jack was so far a perfect candidate for the BioHybrid program, but that could all come crashing down if he turned out to view them as people, rather than the vicious monsters they were._  
  
_Kurata didn’t like to take chances. And it just so happened he’d overheard plans for a large-scale incursion into the Human World planned for tonight. Sure, Jack might be injured, but if that was the case, he’d simply have the boy brought to his private laboratory and offer him both the chance to be healed and the chance to strike back at those who wounded him._  
  
_Really, no matter what happened tonight, Kurata was sure he’d come out ahead._  
  


* * *

  
“What the _fuck_ happened to my kitchen!?”  
  
I’d arrived home after my evening run, the sun setting on the horizon. I’d gone to my kitchen, intending to make myself some chicken curry and browse the internet while I ate. That was no longer feasible, since my kitchen looked like an active warzone, with food used for ammunition.  
  
I stared in disbelief at the sauces, meats, and various foodstuffs I couldn’t even identify anymore smeared, smashed, and spread all over every available surface.  
  
“_Why would someone even... I don’t... what?”_  
  
I stared at the mess in confusion for a good half minute, before just walking away. I sat down on my chair heavily and tried to reason my way through it as best I could.  
  
“Well, it’s obvious that someone broke into my apartment, destroyed my kitchen, and left without noticeably doing anything else. The problem is, why?”  
  
Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any reasons. Eventually the growing hunger pains in my stomach put any deep thoughts on the back burner, and I sighed as I grabbed my wallet and my jacket and prepared to leave again.  
  
“Guess I’m eating out, then.” I muttered to myself on the way out. “Could be worse. They could have actually taken something of value, but no, my computer and all my valuables are where I left them. And I have been meaning to check out that pizza place down the road...”  
  


* * *

  
It was dark by the time I finished my meal and left the restaurant. I was tired, full, and confused. I was looking forward to an uneventful walk home followed by a restful sleep, that would allow me to wake up in the morning good as new and with a fresh new insight on who had destroyed my kitchen.  
  
Apparently, Murphy happened to be looking my way as I thought that. I didn’t so much _feel_ the explosion that took me off my feet from behind, but when I landed and rolled to a halt, already with some nasty bruises and a headache, I could plainly see that the pizza place I had just left, with everyone in it, had been blown up and set on fire. I could also see, slightly less clearly, the creature that had done it winging back into the sky. A Pteramon.  
  
I was in the middle of a Digimon attack. And as I looked up, I realised that it wasn’t alone.  
  
“D-dozens of them?” I mouthed, not trusting my voice. “How – how the _fuck_ did no-one ever mention this? How was _this_ just... ignored in the other episodes?”  
  
I got painfully to my feet, but as I got up I caught a glimpse of the inside of what was left of the pizza place – and its inhabitants.  
  
I bent double and emptied my stomach at the sight, then continued to dry heave even as I turned to leave and took off running back the way I came.  
  


* * *

  
The city blocks passed in a blur as I ran, not paying attention to where I was going beyond getting farther away from the Pteramon bombing the city. I was far from the only one, though most people were screaming while they ran. There were a few others like me, pale, horrified at the whole situation, trying not to draw any attention.  
  
Some of the streets I ran down looked mostly normal. If it weren’t for the screams and explosions, you could almost pretend nothing was wrong. It made it so much worse to see the next block over pulverised to bloody rubble, or on fire, or- _fuckthat’salaser._  
  
I fell over, deliberately tripping myself to be sure I could stop before running straight into the laser that had just cut through the building to my right and carried on across the street into the buildings there. My knees and elbows were scraped raw, but it had to have been better than having whatever kind of laser that was hit me.  
  
I pressed myself back against the resultant rubble once it looked like it wouldn’t crush me and did my best to look like a corpse, dragging some of the smaller pieces over me and trying not to breathe too hard. I heard thundering footsteps coming down the street, but I didn’t dare actually look.  
  
“Heh. Not so tough now, are you?” A gravelly voice called out. “You come into our homes and massacre us and you think you’re so great, but look at you now! **NOSE LASER!**”  
  
Another of the lasers – Nose Lasers, apparently – went shooting down the street, and I went even paler as distant screams were cut short. It was all I could do to keep myself still until the voices moved away and had been gone long enough that I considered it safe to get moving again.  
  
“_The sooner I get out of this hellhole, the better.”_  
  


* * *

  
I made it a few more blocks before a message rang out across the city in a memorably irritating voice. Making my way to a vantage point where I could see a screen that hadn’t been destroyed yet, my suspicions were confirmed.  
  
“...Gotsumon. Gotsumon did this. I knew he was an asshole. I knew he hated humanity. I knew he was great at talking the talk when it came to killing humans. But... this?”  
  
I saw red.  
  
I heard the sound of breaking glass and looked down to see that I’d put my fist through the screen without realising it. My teeth were clenched, my face was twisted in a snarl, and my knuckles were white where they weren’t covered in blood.  
  
I stared at the remains of the screen for a minute or so before pulling myself back together, removing my fist from the screen, and continuing on my way at a much more relaxed pace now that there was apparently a ceasefire. I had been going for runs, true, but there’s only so much you can do in under a week and by now it seemed like my everything hurt.  
  
I only made it two blocks before the explosions started again in the distance. I cursed and was about to start running again, but what I heard stopped me in my tracks.  
  
“Please... somebody help...”  
  
A child’s voice, broken by sobs, coming from the apartment directly to my right. I froze, my rationality and conscience fighting a war in my mind.  
“_There’s nothing I can possibly do to help.”_  
“_But what if...”_  
“_I don’t even know basic first aid, my phone’s broken, and even if it wasn’t the ambulances are probably working overtime anyway.”_  
“_But what if...”_  
“_Hell, it’s probably a freaking trap or something! I go in there, I’m probably going to wind up dead! There is no rational reason for me to do this!”_  
“_...”_  
“_...”_  
“_...”_  
  
I stood there, paralyzed for a few frustrated seconds before making my decision._"Fucking conscience!"_  
  
I dashed into the house, through the broken front door – _This is a bad idea –_ and yelled.  
  
“Hey! Kid! Where are you, I’m here to-” **PAIN**  
  
As my vision faded to grey, and then to black, I looked down and saw the sword blade protruding from my stomach, felt armoured hands push me off of it and pick me up, and heard cruel, mocking laughter.  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata watched the mayhem on dozens of live feeds from his newest batch of Gizumon BASIC. They were all over the city, giving him a much more accurate idea of how the invasion was progressing. They also allowed him to keep track of his potential new BioHybrid. Kurata smiled. Kouki’s recruitment had gone fabulously, all he’d had to do was mention that he’d become stronger and be able to fight incredibly strong opponents and he’d leapt at the chance. He was currently sleeping off the operation, officially the first successful BioHybrid. And now he’d potentially have another join his ranks before the dawn._  
  
_Turning his attention back to the screens, he mused aloud. “Such a careful balancing act. I need to allow this to go on long enough to both get an accurate read on Jack’s opinion of Digimon and allow the public to become thoroughly grounded in the reality the Digimon are vicious monsters. But I also need to cut it off soon, or I risk Jack’s death, or not looking good enough to the Director for having stopped it in time.”_  
  
_His grin widened at what he was seeing. “Fortunately, it looks like half of my worries are mostly unfounded. He’s having the proper response to being faced with a Digimon; running away and trying to escape notice. Now how can I herd him to-”_  
  
_Kurata was cut off in his ramblings by a burst of white noise, followed by an irritating voice being broadcast across the city._  
  
_He scowled. “A ceasefire? That won’t do at all.” He glanced over to the feeds following Keenan Crier and Marcus Damon, and the scowl turned to a smirk. “Fortunately, the resident hothead isn’t likely to allow it to remain for long. All I have to do is wait. And- oh?” Kurata’s attention was drawn back to Jack’s feed by the startlingly loud invective he was hurling at a screen showing the demands, and the biggest smile Kurata had had that day broke out on his face._  
  
_With a laugh in his voice, he proclaimed to the empty room “YES! YES! He is PERFECT!”_  
  
_Unfortunately for him, his laughter was cut short a few moments later as Jack was stopped by what was obviously a trap. His enthusiasm waned, and he sighed to himself as Jack walked straight into it and got himself impaled. “You were so close... Got my hopes up and everything. Oh well.” He activated his radio for the first time that night. “Johnson, the idiot’s gotten himself into a trap. Bring a stretcher and a trauma kit to G-B-045’s location and retrieve him for me, would you?”_  
  
_He glanced over at his other monitors as he heard an affirmative response. “Time to set off the Device, I suppose.” He keyed in a sequence of commands at his console. Before getting up and leaving for bed, he issued one more command through the radio. “Oh, and, let the doctors know that I’ll want him ready for the BioHybrid procedure tomorrow morning.”_  
  


* * *

  
_Beep._  
  
_Beep._  
  
_Beep._  
  
_Beep._  
  
“_...What the hell is that noise?”_  
  
I was awoken by a high-pitched, regular beeping that seemed oddly familiar, though I couldn’t recall from where. I was in bed. Not my bed, this one had none of the lumps I’d gotten familiar with.  
  
I opened my eyes and tried to sit up to look around the room I was in, a lot of realisations hit me in very rapid succession.  
  
“_Oh God my everything hurts. Except my legs for some reason. Don’t think about it. This looks like a hospital. I’m bandaged up, in a hospital bed, with an IV in my arm. That beeping is the heart monitor thing. It’s sped up. How the fuck did I get here?”_  
  
In my tired, painful state I hadn’t noticed that I was speaking my thoughts out loud, nor that there was someone else in the room with me until he replied in a drawling, bored voice that, unfortunately, I recognised.  
  
“Well, I think the answer to that last question of yours will provide clarity on the rest.”  
  
I turned my head to face him with a growing feeling of dread that I was trying very hard not to let show on my face.  
  
_Kurata._  
  
There he stood, a hand on the controls for my IV. Doing that impossible anime-glasses thing where they turn into goddamn flashlights for no reason. I was torn between the intense desires to beat his face in and to get as far away from him as I possibly could.  
  
Fortunately, Kurata didn’t seem to notice this and kept talking.  
  
“First things first: introductions. I am Professor Akihiro Kurata, the person who saved your life. You are Jack Sato, a university student taking a gap year, who somehow knows far more about Digimon than you should and who walked right into an obvious trap last night.”  
  
He paused for a moment and smirked at me before continuing.  
  
“You had been doing an excellent job, too. You avoided the Pteramon’s attention, hid from the Boarmon, and only stopped when it became apparent that you didn’t need to run anymore.” He sighed. “Of course, then you botched it. You heard a recording of a child’s pleas for help and went to save them, at which point the Musyamon who set up the trap impaled you, severing your spinal cord just above your waist and leaving you completely paraplegic.”  
  
I slumped, shock warring with despair. I dimly registered that Kurata had continued his lecture, but I wasn’t listening anymore. By itself it would have been bad, but combined with Kurata taking a personal interest in me and what had happened last night, it was just too much. I was more or less catatonic, trying to process the colossal amount of shit life had decided to bury me in, until Kurata noticed I wasn’t listening and snapped his fingers right next to my ear, an annoyed expression on his face.  
  
“Hello? Jack? You still there?” He waited until I nodded at him to continue. “Good. Now, as I was saying, you have two options here.” He held up a finger. “First, you reject my offer, in which case I stop giving you medical care, remove any Digimon-related memories of yours so you don’t cause me any problems, and dump you in an alley where you can hope someone finds you and gets you to a hospital before you die.” He held up another finger beside it. “Second, you take my offer, do some work for me, and I have my doctors make you even better than new.” His smirk came back in full force. “So? What’ll it be?”  
  
It wasn’t a real choice. I was probably going to hate the ‘work’ he’d have me doing, but the alternative was amnesia and paraplegia at best, and I probably wasn’t lucky enough for that.  
  
I closed my eyes and sighed. “...Fine. I’ll do it.”  
  
I heard him slowly clapping. “Wonderful! Glad to see you’re capable of making the right choice. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to get revenge on the Digimon that did this before long. Just one last thing for you to do. The doctors will be here in an hour for your operation.” I felt something smooth and light bounce off of my torso. “Just pick one of the Digimon on that list before the doctors get here. You’ll have the option to change it later, but it’ll be quite a hassle. I’ll see you this evening to get some tests done.”  
  
I waited until I heard the door close to open my eyes again and look at what he’d tossed to me, feeling like I’d sold my soul to the devil. It was a tablet, with a list of Digimon on it arranged seemingly at random. There were no pictures, just a list of names. I scrolled through them, noting that they were all Rookie level and that the list didn’t seem anywhere near complete.  
  
“_Which is a good thing, since if he had access to Arkadimon, Bemmon, or Lucemon the season would’ve been over in about two or three episodes.”_  
  
I knew damn well what this was for. I might not have remembered much about the BioHybrids, but I knew they existed. I knew there were three of them: a slow Russian guy that thought out loud all the time and thought Yoshi was pretty, an annoying girl that I’m pretty sure had a crush on Thomas, and a complete psycho that was essentially Marcus if you changed all of his good traits to ‘hyper-aggressive asshat’.  
  
I knew what I had just signed myself up for, and I knew that the Digimon I was choosing was almost definitely going to be the one I got... spliced into me, or however the hell BioHybridisation worked. I’d already seen Dorumon, so I had a backup, but I was looking for a specific one...  
  
I smiled weakly. “There you are.” I made my choice. Just in time, since I heard a commotion in the hall outside and a group of doctors came into the room. One of them took the tablet and noted my choice, another went to a desk in the corner of the room that I hadn’t paid any attention to and started removing equipment from it, and the third walked over to my IV and started doing something with it.  
  
I faded back into unconsciousness, knowing that when I woke up, I’d be part Digimon.  
  
_...Guilmon..._


	3. Look at me still talking when there's science to do

When I woke up, I was in yet another different bed. The room I was in reminded me of the time I’d gone apartment hunting. It seemed like a relatively ordinary studio apartment, if a bit small. The only odd thing I could see was the lack of windows.  
  
Of course, then I remembered why I was there and shot up fast enough that I wound up tangled in a pile of blankets upside-down on the floor. I mostly untangled myself, but quickly ran into a snag when I tried to stand up. Namely, my legs didn’t seem to work.  
  
“_Wait, what? I thought Kurata said he’d fix that?”_ I tried to remember what Kurata had said, but I couldn’t remember his exact words. _“Bastard probably left himself some kind of loophole or something. Or just straight-up lied.”_  
  
Of course, as soon as I stopped panicking over that, I noticed something that would have otherwise been obvious. I was dressed in generic pyjamas, and my left arm seemed heavier than it should have been. Upon further inspection, the reason became obvious, and I stared at the crimson-and-grey Digivice on my arm.  
  
“_Huh. I wonder...”_ Curiosity got the better of me and I rolled back my sleeve. My entire left forearm was in a sort of metal brace, with covered sections on the underside that I was sure hid the spots where it merged with my arm.  
  
I decided to leave it alone until I had an instruction manual or something. No sense accidentally breaking the thing before I got to use it even once.  
  
I inspected the room further, looking for something specific, and sighed when I found it. I unfolded the wheelchair Kurata had provided and manoeuvred myself to the attached bathroom.  
  
I looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t in the best condition, but from the feel of things it looked worse than it was. My brown hair, while incredibly tangled and grimy after last night, still went down to my shoulders. My recently-trimmed beard was much the same way. The only part of my face that didn’t seem to show signs of last night were my eyes, their washed-out green looking just the same as they usually did after I’d just woken up.  
  
Self-inspection done, I turned to the shower and scowled. This was going to be a massive pain to deal with, a lot of effort for something that was supposed to be relaxing, but it wasn’t about to get any easier if I didn’t try.  
  


* * *

  
Once I’d cleaned myself up and got myself looking less like I’d spent the night in an alley, I decided to venture out of my room. Opening the door, I came face-to-sternum with a bored-looking guard who had been standing outside. He was wearing a full-face helmet and what looked like some kind of light body armour, and I was pretty sure he had a gun on him, even if I couldn’t have pointed out where.  
  
“Good. You’re awake. The Professor is currently busy, but he sends his regards. I am to take you to the cafeteria to eat, and then to the gym for training and tests. Please don’t bother asking me any questions, the Professor can likely answer you far better than I can when he gets back.”  
  
The nameless guard rattled all that off in a bored, emotionless tone before turning and walking away down the featureless light grey corridor, gesturing for me to follow. I did so quietly, since I was pretty sure there would be consequences for doing anything stupid and he didn’t seem to be in the mood to chat.  
  
This belief was only reinforced when I got to the cafeteria and saw a blond kid having to eat with one hand, since his other hand was cuffed to the table he was at. With a lack of any real options, and since I didn’t remember much about the BioHybrids from the show, I decided to roll myself over to the same table once I had my food.  
  
When he looked up and noticed me, an expression of shock appeared. “Wow. What the hell did _you_ do? I beat up three of my guards and all they did was cuff me.”  
  
It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. “Huh? Oh, right, the wheelchair. No, the guards didn’t do that. That happened last night when a Digimon turned me into a shish kebab.”  
  
“Oh.” That seemed to stump him for a moment. “Well, I’m Kouki, and I’m the best fighter around!” He paused to keep eating for a few bites. “How about you? What’s your name? I don’t think you want me calling you ‘wheelchair guy’ or something.”  
  
Ah. Kouki. That was his name. “I’m Jack.”  
  
The conversation stalled for a while as we ate our food. When we were finished, three guards came over to us. “Don’t bother with the plates. The Professor wants you two to finish your preliminary testing as soon as possible. Come on.”  
  
I could hear Kouki grumbling mutinously about ‘stupid boring tests’ as one of the guards fastened the cuffs behind Kouki’s back and connected them to a wrist strap on the guard’s uniform with a small chain. We were lead through some different hallways, though I only knew they were different because we left through a different door.  
  
Eventually, we reached the gym where we’d be doing the tests. We were led to different sections of the room, evidently because Kouki had already done about half of the tests. While Kouki was lead over to an area with things that wouldn’t have looked too out of place in a normal gym, I was led off to the side of the room, where a row of cubicles was lined up. I wheeled myself into the one on the far right and found myself facing a computer screen with a video ready to play. I started it.  
  
Kurata’s face came up on the screen, and he immediately began talking in a brisk, business-like tone that still somehow managed to be smug. “Hello again, Jack. Sorry I can’t be there in person, but duty calls at the most inopportune times. Now, you’re doubtless wondering when you’ll get to the good stuff. Well, it’s simple. You see that device on your left arm? It’s called a Digivice. It’s a modified version of a model typically used by humans with Digimon partners in order to make those partners stronger. Yours, however, is designed to make _you_ stronger. You remember that tablet with names on it? As I’m sure you’re aware, those were names of Digimon. What you probably didn’t know, is that whichever Digimon you picked is now a part of you. Their data has been spliced into you, and that Digivice is the key to unlocking it.” He glanced at something below the camera. “You picked... oh. Guilmon. Well, just be careful with that...”  
  
A picture of a Guilmon showed up on the screen next to Kurata. “This is what Guilmon actually looks like. Now, normal Digivices are fuelled by an energy called ‘DNA Charge’, which supposedly comes from the bond between Digimon and human or some such nonsense. Yours has been modified, and you along with it, to use a variant I invented called ‘BioHybrid DNA Charge’, and it should be fairly easy to access. Just focus on the image of Guilmon, on the feeling of being more powerful, on the thought of getting revenge at the Digimon that attacked you and your home, and you should have no problems. You’ll probably pass out the first time or two, but considering what you’re actually doing it’s not that surprising.”  
  
He smiled. “That should be all. If you have any more questions, I’ll be happy to answer them when I get back. Good luck!” With a cheery wave, that window went black, leaving just the image of Guilmon.  
  
I sighed. _“As much as I hate him, he knows how to do an instructional video. And of course, he didn’t mention my legs once. Bastard._”  
  
I started thinking about Guilmon. Easy enough, Tamers had more than enough in the way of memorable moments with Guilmon in them. Being more powerful wasn’t hard either, I just had to remember having working legs.  
  
Revenge on the Digimon. It was surprisingly easy to call up that feeling. I didn’t care so much about the Boarmon and Pteramon, they did some horrible things, sure, but they weren’t the ones in charge. They also didn’t do anything much to me personally. _“But Gotsumon, and whichever Digimon faked a crying kid and stabbed me? They can go-”_  
  
My thoughts were interrupted as my right hand caught fire.  
  
It wasn’t really fire, of course. For one thing it was barely a few sparks, and for another it was purple. It was the BioHybrid DNA Charge.  
  
Before I could come up with any reasons not to, I fed it into the Digivice – _my_ Digivice – and the world went white.  
  


* * *

  
When I regained consciousness, everything felt weird. I frowned as I tried to make sense of it. My head felt too... long? My ears were just _weird_, I couldn’t feel my smallest two fingers, my legs and tail were-  
  
My eyes shot open and I saw the cause of my confusion. At some point while I was out again - _“I really need to stop passing out so much._” - someone had moved me to a different cubicle. This one had mirrored walls, and in those mirrors, I could see a shocked and confused Guilmon looking back at me.  
  
“_Well, BioGuilmon anyway.”_ I thought, noting the differences between myself and a normal Guilmon; longer claws, green eyes, and longer, slimmer... everything. I was pretty sure I was bigger than the average Guilmon as well, but without anything to measure myself from I wasn’t sure.  
  
Come to think of it, I looked pretty similar to a Guilmon X, though the markings were the normal Guilmon ones. Including the Digital Hazard symbol on my chest.  
  
I shuddered. Determined to ignore that possibility for the moment, I got up and walked closer to the mirror to get a better look at myself. Or rather, I tried to do that, and faceplanted into the mirror the moment I took a step.  
  
“Ow, my nose...” I said, rubbing the sore spot. Right. Different body means different balance, different legs, different way to walk. Getting back up, I steadied myself on the mirror and tried again, taking it slower this time. I figured out where I was going wrong pretty quickly. As it turns out, suddenly having a tail really throws off your balance. If I wanted to stand upright like I’d been trying, my tail had to be almost straight down or I’d start to tip over backwards. If I wanted my tail in any other position, I had to have my torso at an angle to balance it and vice versa. It was easy once I got the hang of it and I was feeling pretty proud of myself.  
  
Then I realised walking was probably the easiest thing I’d need to relearn and slumped a bit.  
  


* * *

  
I’d left the cubicle, and had spent the following few hours figuring out how to work my new body. I’d pretty much got the hang of the basics, and now it was lunch time. Which presented a problem.  
  
“Sir, I’ll ask again, please return to human form before you leave the room.” The guard sounded pretty thoroughly exasperated by this point, so it was a pity I wasn’t going to give up.  
  
“I really don’t see why I should. I don’t like being paralysed, and I don’t have to be human to eat. There’s no reason I should have to change back.” I was getting pretty annoyed by this point, and since when I stood up straight I was taller than the guard and glaring at him, it was no surprise I was smelling something that I was pretty sure was the beginnings of fear.  
  
“S-sir, for the last time-” “Oh, let him do it. What’s the harm?”  
  
The guard’s irritated request was interrupted by Kurata’s usual smug tones. My head immediately turned to point directly at the source of the noise, an inconspicuous long mirror on the wall. Which, judging by the amused noise Kurata made, was hiding some kind of observation room.  
  
“Good senses as well as good sense. Good... Anyway, Stevenson, he’s been good so far, so there’s no reason to think he’ll go running off or attacking anyone. There’s no harm in letting him stay like that as long as he doesn’t cause any trouble.”  
  
The guard shot an annoyed look my way, but began to lead me back to the cafeteria with a very unenthusiastic “Yes, sir.”  
  
I took one last look at the hidden room, making sure to memorise where it was, before following him back through the bland halls.  
  
Upon my arrival, I saw Kouki again, without handcuffs this time, sitting at the same table as before. Once again, he didn’t seem to notice me until I had my food and was sitting down at the same table, only this time he just stared open-mouthed as I set down my plate, which was piled much higher than it had been that morning.  
  
Then I tried to pick up a fork to start eating. Unfortunately, Guilmon’s claws were meant for breaking things first and picking them up a distant second, so the cheap plastic fork shattered immediately.  
  
I glared at the remains of the fork as Kouki started to snicker at my misfortune. That stopped pretty quickly once I turned my glare on him. I sighed and went to go get some more forks. This was probably going to take a while.  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata had just returned from Gizumon’s first field test in the Real World and was planning out how his report would go in the back of his mind while he went over the footage of that day’s training._  
  
_Kouki had an... odd Digimon to get spliced with, it didn’t really suit him at all, though since he had apparently tossed the tablet aside and told the doctors that “It doesn’t matter what I get, I’ll be more than capable of fighting with anything!”, he couldn’t really complain about the result. Though he did at least have the advantage that his new form was still roughly humanoid, which meant he didn’t have to get used to an entirely new body structure the way Jack did. As a result he’d raced through the tests, completing two days’ worth in just a few hours._  
  
_Meanwhile, Jack’s choice had resulted in several hours being used just to get used to moving around, never mind the various other tests he still had to get through. Kurata wasn’t sure yet how much Jack actually knew about Digimon, but the sample he’d picked was one of the most theoretically potentially dangerous samples Kurata had, seeing as he’d found it in a secluded temple much like Belphemon’s._  
  
_Still, it was hard to worry about that when Kurata arrived in the observation room and saw Jack experimenting with different postures and balances. He’d never admit it, but seeing a dinosaur roughly seven or eight feet from nose to tail tipping back and forth like a drinking bird toy with an expression of concentration on his face was one of the funniest things Kurata had ever seen._  
  
_An explosion behind him reminded him that Kouki had moved on to attempting to use the attacks inherent in his new body, and he tore his eyes away from the comedy gold in front of him to give Kouki a tip through the speakers. “Given the tendency of Digimon to shout the names of their attacks before or while using them, it seems likely that doing so increases the power of the attack. Why don’t you try? You should instinctively know what they’re called, Digimon seem to have all kinds of inherent knowledge.”_  
  
_He leaned back in his chair, content to watch his BioHybrids work things out. Though when a particularly strong ‘Bada Boom!’ completely destroyed the speaker in Kouki’s section, he figured it was probably time to call for a break. He signalled the guards to take them both to lunch, and was about to leave himself when he noticed the surprisingly calm argument Jack was having with his guard._  
  
“_Odd. Why would he want to- oh.” Kurata’s musing was cut short by the sight of the wheelchair the guard was holding. “Right. I left _that_ in. No wonder he’s arguing, I wouldn’t want to be in a wheelchair either.”_  
  
_He cut in and defused the argument before it could escalate, leaving for his own, private, lunch shortly afterwards. He made sure to save the video of Jack’s attempts at balance to his personal computer first though. That was going to be his new screensaver from now on._


	4. Explanations and Explosions (The best parts of Science)

I got about halfway through my pile of food with the constantly-breaking forks before Kouki actually said anything. “Are you Jack, or are you just really rude?”  
  
“I’m Jack.”  
  
_crack_  
  
The forks were taking a little longer to break now. I was making progress.  
  
“Okay. Next question: how the hell did you convince the guards to let you back here looking like that? They all but pointed a gun in my face when _I_ tried.”  
  
_“Why am I not surprised.” _“If I had to guess, I’d say it was a combination of my good behaviour, the fact that I’d need a wheelchair if I was human, and the fact that nobody really wants to try to tell the eight-foot velociraptor he can’t do something.”  
  
Kouki let out a quick laugh. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”  
  
_crack_  
  
Right about then I decided that that was enough manual dexterity training for now, folded one of the paper plates in half, and started using it as a small shovel.  
  
We passed a few minutes in silence, just eating. Around the time I sat down with my third heaped load, Kouki spoke up again.  
  
“Okay, seriously. How can you eat that much? I know you’re a dinosaur, but your stomach is only so big.”  
  
I blinked, looking between him and my plate-shovel a few times before shrugging.  
  
“Digimon are big eaters? Don’t really know why, though.”  
  
He accepted that for the time being, though he looked annoyed when he finished his single plate around the time I finished my fourth.  
  
I paid him no mind as we were lead back to the gym for more practise and testing. I was surprised to find that Kurata was waiting for us when we got there, though.  
  
Kouki was as well, and a lot more vocal about it. “What’s the occasion? This is the first time I’ve seen you outside of the observation room.”  
  
Kurata was, of course, prepared for this. His smug smirk never once left his face. “Well, you both have been doing quite well, so I thought I’d see if you had any questions for me before we dive right back into the tests. Any takers?”  
  
I was unable to completely hide my hostility as I answered quickly. “Yeah. You said you’d fix my legs last night, but I woke up needing a wheelchair. Care to explain?”  
  
He seemed to get a contemplative look on his face as he mumbled to himself for a few seconds, before snapping his fingers with a look of dawning comprehension. “_Oh!_ Oh. I’m so sorry, I didn’t intend for you to think that.” _Bullshit._ “When I said you’d be ‘better than new’ I meant that you wouldn’t be in danger of dying and that you’d be a BioHybrid. That’s certainly better than any hospital could have given you. And you seem to have found a workaround regardless, so it all worked out in the end, right?”  
  
No. Not really. But I couldn’t just say that. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew that wouldn’t end well. So I gave a muttered “Sure” and listened to Kouki’s question, which amusingly, centred around me.  
  
“At lunch, Jack had a normal plate of food, but at dinner just now he had enough for six people and looked like he could probably keep going. I know he’s a Digimon and all, but how does that work?”  
  
“Huh.” Kurata looked surprised. I know I wasn’t expecting that. “Well, there’s a few factors there. First, he’s bigger than he was. Second, he’s been more active since breakfast than he was before it. But I think you’re probably looking for the third point."  
  
Kurata was in full-on lecture mode. “You see, Digimon are made of data. When a Digimon eats food that’s also made of data, such as food from the Digital World, there are no problems and they eat normal-sized meals. But when a Digimon tries to eat food from this world, before they can digest it, it needs to be converted into data so that they can process it. The conversion is a rather energy-intensive process, so the Digimon gets less energy overall from the same amount of food, which means they need more. At the same time, they can also fit more in because data is much easier to store compactly than food is.”  
  
He paused to see if Kouki had any response. When he remained silent other than a slight “Huh”, Kurata continued with a smirk. “Fun fact, DATS likes to play that aspect of the situation up as much as they can when they find someone with a wild Digimon in the hopes that they’ll give up the Digimon without a fight. Doesn’t work too often, but it has helped occasionally.”  
  
_“That… explains a lot, actually.”_  
  
Kurata clapped his hands once. “So! If that’s everything, I’ll let you get to your tests now. Have fun!”  
  


* * *

  
The advanced mobility tests were surprisingly fun. They combined moving at speed, agility around obstacles, and tests of reflexes. This mostly meant running a constantly-changing obstacle course while dodging projectiles, usually dodgeballs, thrown by the guards here and there.  
  
I failed. A lot. Basic balance was easy now that I had the hang of it, but I still had an unfamiliar body and I fell into the Centipede’s Dilemma more than I’d like. The guards also seemed to like trying to trip me up, though that was understandable since it was almost the only thing they could do that had an effect beyond a slight distraction. The explosions coming from Kouki’s area were only slightly less distracting.  
  
But as the hours wore on, I steadily improved. By the time the tests were over for the day I was, if not perfect by any means, likely better than I would have been as a human if my legs still worked.  
  
I caught a look at Kouki on the way out, and I wasn’t sure why, but he looked immensely frustrated. _“I wonder what that’s about.” _I thought for a moment. _“Meh. I’ll probably find out tomorrow.”_  
  
I got back to my room, gave a tired “Good night” to the guard before closing the door, and practically melted into bed. I'd been running around for hours and I was _exhausted_.  
  
I wriggled around a bit to get comfortable and fell asleep almost immediately.  
  


* * *

  
_I found myself sitting in a dark void, human again. I looked around. The ‘floor’, as much as you could call it that, was only really there inasmuch as I wasn’t noticeably falling, and the only difference between it and the ‘sky’ was that the floor didn’t have stars on it._   
  
_I looked up as far as I could, leaning back to really drink in the view of the galaxies my mind had conjured, and my back hit something warm. I turned to see what I was sitting against, and I found a Guilmon looking up at the sky, the same as I was._   
  
_I smiled, and looked back up. We spent the night sitting together in a friendly silence, stargazing._   
  


* * *

  
The next morning, I woke up smiling. I was still a Guilmon, and I felt _great_. Even the awkwardness of using a human bathroom as a dinosaur wasn’t enough to get me down, in no small part because it was still easier than it was yesterday. Getting dressed was significantly easier too, for obvious reasons. _“I think that’s the first time it’s crossed my mind that I’m sort of naked right now. And was for most of yesterday.”_ I shrugged. _“Nobody else seems to care. Even if they did, the clothes here wouldn’t fit me like this.”_  
  
If the guard outside my door was unnerved by the toothy grin that greeted them, they did an admirable job of hiding it. They also actually had something to say this time.  
  
“Kouki won’t be joining you for breakfast. He got up earlier and had his then. He’s been training all morning.”  
  
I nodded in response, still grinning. It was no big deal. We didn’t generally talk that much during meals anyway.  
  
One large breakfast and several broken forks later, I was escorted to the gym again. This time though, I was lead in a different direction. I recalled that this was the direction Kouki generally went in.  
  
I looked inquisitively at the guard as we walked, a distant sound of intermittent explosions slowly growing in intensity. “I take it I’ve finished the mobility tests?”  
  
The guard pursed her lips before responding. “Yes. You’re on to learning attacks now.” She then glanced around before continuing in a lower voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but there’s a betting pool based on how the two of you do in your training. Right now I’m thinking of putting some money on whether you’ll figure out more attacks than he has by the end of the day. You seem to know more about the whole ‘Digimon’ thing than most people here based on how short the tutorials the Professor gave you were. What do you think the odds on that bet are?”  
  
I took a moment to think all of that through. _“I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. Why not?”_ Out loud, though matching her volume, I replied. “That depends on a few things.”  
  
“Such as?”  
  
“First, how much progress he seems to be making. Second, which Digimon he ended up with. And third,” with a wry grin appearing on my face, “what’s in it for me if I help you out here?”  
  
She chuckled. “Well, I saw how you were eyeing up those pastries earlier. Now wouldn’t it be nice if someone happened to put in a word with the kitchen staff to have a few extra plates brought in?”  
  
She glanced over when I didn’t immediately respond and promptly had to muffle a laugh at my expression. “I take it that’s a yes?”  
  
I hastily pulled my tongue in and closed my mouth, and made sure I hadn’t actually drooled anywhere before nodding sheepishly.  
  
Still snickering, she continued. “Well. His progress was initially good, but it plateaued after he figured out his second kind of explosion. I’m pretty sure the name was ‘BioImpmon’-“  
  
She was cut off as it was my turn to muffle a laugh. _“Impmon!? Big, bad, Kouki, the champion fighter, picked IMPMON!?”_  
  
She gave me a moment to calm down before responding dryly. “I take it that means your chances are good?”  
  
Still chuckling a bit, I thought it over. “I’m decently sure I’ll come out on top if the attacks are anything close to intuitive. As far as I know, Guilmon has somewhere from four to about seven depending on what actually counts as a move. Impmon has about… three or four? Almost definitely less, anyway. Plus I’ve got the advantage of knowing what the attacks actually are.”  
  
She smiled widely. “Good to know. I’ll bet on you, I’ll let my friends know too, and if you deliver you’ll get all the desserts you can eat.”  
  
We arrived at the door to the gym seconds later, the explosions the loudest they’d been yet. “That seems like awfully convenient timing.” I remarked.  
  
She snorted. “Convenient my ass. We’ve been going around in circles for the last few minutes so we’d have time to talk.”  
  
I stopped for a moment and looked back at the corridor, only now noticing that the reason all the halls had looked the same was because they were, in fact, the same hall. I could actually see the door to the dining hall less than half a minute away.  
  
The guard laughed one last time at my actions. “Look, the professor has us all on rotation because... reasons, so we probably won’t meet up again after today. But probably isn’t definitely, so…” She held out her hand to shake. “I’m Margaret Yushima. Mags to my friends.”  
  
I returned the gesture with a smile, though I had the nagging suspicion that I knew that name from somewhere. “Nice to finally get a name for someone. I’m Jack Sato, in case you weren’t told that.”  
  
We broke it off and entered the gym, and it was immediately painfully obvious where the explosions were coming from. Bouncing around the middle of the room and taking out training dummies with an expression and vehemence that suggested they’d insulted his mother, was Kouki. Or at least I guessed it was Kouki. He was BioImpmon at the moment.  
  
BioImpmon had similar changes to the basic Impmon as I had to the basic Guilmon. He was taller, somewhere around torso-height rather than Impmon’s usual waist-high stature. Rather than getting leaner, however, he was slightly stockier than a normal Impmon. Likely because making Impmon leaner would result in a stick-figure. His colour scheme was also slightly different – the reds more vivid and the purples darker.  
  
By far the most obvious difference however, was the face on his chest. Where a normal Impmon had a yellow smiling face with pointed teeth, Kouki had a red face. With horns. And a pointed tail. And _angry eyebrows._  
  
It was all I could do to keep a straight face, and even then only because I had some warning.  
  
Mags led me off to the side, where another cubicle with a recorded message was waiting for me.  
  
Once she’d left and the door had closed, blocking most of the noise of the explosions, I started the video.  
  
Kurata’s face popped up again, and his usual bored drawl began immediately, along with my usual flash of mixed anger and fear.  
  
“Hello again, Jack. Sorry I couldn’t be there to tell you this in person, but if you’re seeing this, it means you’ve started while I was busy elsewhere. As before, if you have any questions about the material, I’ll be more than happy to answer them when I get back.  
  
“On to today’s training area: Attacks. The good news is that based on data we gathered about you at one point or another, you already know the basic concepts, so we can skip right to using them.”  
  
He sighed. “The bad news is that I don’t have much to tell you here. Most Digimon seem to perform attacks through some combination of instinct and knowledge. Whether you’ll know much about your attacks is up in the air, though you should at the very least have an instinctual grasp of one or two. Outside of that, all I can really tell you is that while it’s possible to use attacks without calling them, they seem to be much stronger when you do.  
  
“I suspect it’s related to the emotions behind the attack, since Digimon seem to use emotions as fuel based on Norstein’s findings… but that’s not important right now. Today, for you, is just about getting the hang of using your attacks properly. Don’t be nervous about destroying the dummies, it’s what they’re there for after all. And feel free to ask the guards to bring in more if and when you need to." He paused for a moment. "I think that’s everything. Best of luck, and have fun.”  
  
The screen went black, and I was left with my thoughts. _“Combination of instinct and knowledge, eh?”_ I grinned. _“Well, I’ve certainly got one of those down pat.”_  
  


* * *

  
Getting some dummies set up the way I wanted them was, unsurprisingly, as easy as asking Mags. I quickly had five dummies set up at five meter intervals away from me, similar to a firing range. Appropriate, given what I’d be trying first.  
  
I stood facing the dummy, my eyes pointed at the dummy but unfocused. I was concentrating on breathing evenly, and seeing if I could call up any sort of energy from my chest or throat. I felt a spark of... something... and reached for-  
  
“Hey, Jurassic Blockhead! This isn’t your bedroom, so maybe try _not_ falling asleep!”  
  
I lost the spark, and turned to glare at Kouki. “I wasn’t asleep, I was concentrating. It tends to help when you’re stuck on a problem.”  
  
He waved a hand dismissively. “Pfeh. Just go with the flow, and work things out along the way. It’s always worked for me.”  
  
I ground my teeth. His attitude was getting on my nerves more than it really should have. “Yes, because only managing _two attacks_ in as many days is really a shining example of progress.”  
  
He scowled. “Hey, I may only have two attacks down, but my explosions are still more than _you’ve_ pulled off, so why don’t you put your money where your mouth is before you go insulting me like that.”  
  
_“I was _trying_ when you interrupted me. I’ve been at this for _less than a minute_. And those pathetic explosions might be bigger than Impmon’s normal fare, but they’re nowhere close to even a normal Guilmon’s-“_ I felt the spark again. It was much stronger now. I seized on it and threw my all into it. The energy built up in my throat, forcing my head back momentarily, before I threw it back down and released it all at once with a roar.  
  
**“PYRO SPHERE!”**  
  
The resultant fireball soared across the gym in moments, detonating right underneath Kouki and sending pieces of his now-burning training dummies flying everywhere. Smoke rose and dust settled from a newly-formed, massive crater in the floor. Kouki himself was thrown into the far wall and landed with a groaning thud.  
  
Everything was silent for a few moments, except for my heavy breathing and the crackle of the leftover flames here and there. Then Kouki raised a hand with the thumb extended, and spoke weakly. “Okay… you win… this round… ow…” His hand fell back to his side.  
  
I looked around blankly at the destruction I’d wrought with a single attack. _“Right. BioHybrid. I’m basically Champion Level right now.”_ As guards filed in and began cleaning up, Mags giving me a cheeky smile, I couldn’t help but feel like things might actually end well.  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata looked over the footage he’d been sent of that morning’s training while he had his lunch break. Being a consultant for DATS meant regular work days, which meant he had to take things in remotely-viewed chunks, but it would be worth it to get rid of Merukimon once and for all. And as he looked over Jack’s results for the morning session, he started to look forward to that evening’s event more and more._   
  
_“I wonder how much he’ll appreciate the effort it took to arrange that for him…”_


	5. Error Error Does Not Compute

I was, unsurprisingly, restricted to melee attacks for the rest of the morning while the guards set up another testing area elsewhere that could actually stand up to me. Being a Guilmon, and having repeatedly searched the internet exhaustively for everything I could find about them, figuring the attacks out proved to be fairly simple for the most part. Now that I’d used one attack, I could recognise that feeling of… potential that signified that I could activate one of them.  
  
Once the dummies were back in position, I decided to start simple. Rock Breaker was essentially an extra-powerful claw swipe, so how bad could it really be?  
  
I walked to the dummy on the far left, next to the wall – no sense complicating things by doing it while moving just yet – and swung my claws, pulling on the potential.  
  
**“Rock Breaker!”**  
  
The dummy’s torso and head were reduced to scraps as if it had been hit by a point-blank shotgun round, what was left was thrown a few meters away, and my claws embedded themselves over an inch into the concrete. I stared for a moment at the carnage I was capable of doling out on a whim. After a few seconds, Kouki snapped me out of it with a yell.  
  
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me! I’ve been training hard since yesterday trying to get a second attack going, and you just knock one out in a few minutes? How does that make sense?”  
  
I had to try very hard to not laugh while he said that. I hadn’t realised it before, what with trying to either focus on my attacks, or trying to focus on not laughing just at the fact that he ended up as Impmon, but in this form he sounded almost exactly the same as the Impmon from Tamers, obnoxious accent and all.  
  
I shrugged, grinning. “I don’t know. Could be all kinds of reasons.” I turned to go to the next dummy in line. “Why did you choose Impmon, anyway? I know the tablet didn’t have pictures, but even just going by the name it doesn’t seem like it’d be something you’d pick.”  
  
He was silent for a moment. “That’s because I _didn’t_ pick it.”  
  
I stopped and turned to face him, curious. He had a severely annoyed look on his face. “I told the doctors that the names didn’t mean anything to me and I could probably beat up anyone they cared to name no matter which one I got, so they picked for me. According to the professor, they picked the cheapest, weakest Digimon they had on file so they wouldn’t waste more powerful or useful data on someone that didn’t care.” His face twisted into a snarl. “I didn’t exactly think they’d stick me in a purple pyromaniac toddler that’s this damn useless in a fight though.”  
  
“Huh.” I turned back to the row of dummies. “Maybe it’s related? Guilmon suits me, so using it properly is easy. Impmon doesn’t suit you at all, so using it is a pain in the ass.”  
  
I heard Kouki sigh. “No real way to know for sure, but I guess that makes sense.”  
  
I reached the dummy. Since Rock Breaker had worked so well, I decided to move on to the next attack I vaguely remembered from the wiki.  
  
**“Wild Scratch!”**  
  
The attack left me feeling… odd. While I was _technically_ in control, it felt more like I was controlling a video game character doing a combo than like I was actually doing it myself. Regardless, the attack made short work of the dummy, and it collapsed to the floor in a much tidier pile of scraps than the first one had.  
  
I took a deep breath, more out of a feeling that I should after doing that than any actual need to do so. I heard a small noise from Kouki and turned to look, but as soon as I did he turned away. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking though, with his fist clenched and shaking at his side like it was.  
  
I shook my head. _“If he managed to get past this in canon, he can get past it here. Frankly I should probably be trying to sabotage him, but…”_ I sighed and turned to the next dummy. _“I just don’t have the heart to do it. It would feel like kicking a puppy.”_ I heard a vigorous series of explosions from behind me and revised my last thought slightly. _“A pyromaniac puppy with anger issues, maybe, but still.”_  
  
I stared at the dummy. On to the next attack, and another feeling of being a video game character pulling off a combo, though a different kind this time.  
  
**“Neck Stretcher!”**  
  
True to its name, the attack involved somehow doing a ‘this is Sparta’-style kick to the area of the dummy where the chin would be. Most of the dummy was fine, but its head was halfway across the room, and what remained of its neck was scattered between the two points.  
  
I made my way to the next dummy, the explosions from Kouki’s direction having been replaced with muttered curses.  
  
There were only three more attacks I could think of that weren’t ranged, and one of them required equipment while the other wasn’t really an attack, so I decided to try the last one on my mental list. I stepped up to the dummy and swung my claws again.  
  
“Hazard Claw!”  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

  
Only this time, the flicker of potential went out at the last moment, leaving me raking my claws across the dummy’s chest. It was still a horrific amount of damage, and if it was a person they’d need to get to the ICU in minutes at best if they didn’t want to need the morgue instead. But it wasn’t the incendiary Rock Breaker I was expecting, and I didn’t know why. The flicker came back after I had finished, so maybe if I did this a little differently…  
  
“Hazard Claw!”  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

  
Again, it vanished. I frowned. If this was what Kouki was going through, I could see why he was so pissed off. It was immensely frustrating.  
  
I wouldn’t just give up though. Hazard Claw was, in most cases, the best melee attack Guilmon had, and I was going to keep at this until I had it.  
  
“Hazard Claw!”  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

  
No matter how frustrating this got.

* * *

  
After a few minutes of repeated failure, Kouki spoke up again. I looked away from the latest target of my frustration, blinking. “Sorry, didn’t catch that?”  
  
He shook his head. “No biggie. Just glad I’m not the only one having problems anymo-“  
  
I spun around, hoping that maybe having been distracted would help somehow.  
  
“Hazard-“  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

  
I didn’t bother to finish the attack. I knew by this point that the flicker disappeared partway through the phrase.  
  
“Maybe you’re saying it wrong?”  
  
I turned to face Kouki again with a frustrated sigh. “No, that’s not it. Even if I wasn’t sure that I had the name right, I tried it a few times without the name, just focusing on the intention, and got the same result.”  
  
He looked pretty frustrated himself. “Damn. That’s pretty much all I had.”  
  
We stood in silence for a moment before he spoke up again. “So… what does yours feel like, then?”  
  
I blinked. “My failures, you mean?”  
  
He snorted. “Well what else would I be asking about?”  
  
“Fair enough.” I shrugged, then thought for a moment. “Like I’ve got a few sparks that I could turn into a fire, but they always go out halfway through the attack. How about you?”  
  
He sighed. “Like I’ve got hot and cold taps, like on a sink, but if I try anything other than a quick, small, burst of hot water then trying to use any of it just sends the whole thing down the drain.” He paused, then continued. “The professor said it was probably because I didn’t know what the attacks would do, so the attacks didn’t know what to do either. Though that didn’t stop the first one from working. You think that might be the case with you?”  
  
I frowned. “No. I know exactly what the attack is supposed to do – it’s supposed to be the same as another attack, but on fire.”  
  
Once again, we stood in silence for a moment, and once again Kouki broke it.  
  
“So… Stupid question, but… well, you said it was like sparks, yeah?”  
  
I cocked my head, curious as to where he was going with this. “Yeah. Why?”  
  
He looked a bit uneasy for some reason. “Well, if that’s what it feels like, have you tried getting it to be a fire before you try to attack?”  
  
I blinked. “Well, no. Usually with my attacks, the part where they turn into a fire is the moment I actually use the attack.”  
  
Kouki seemed to deflate a bit at that. “Oh. Well, I thought it was worth mentioning.”  
  
I thought about it for a moment. “Well, nothing else has worked, so I might as well try it.” A thought struck me and I cringed inside. _“Oh, I am probably going to regret this. But it might help convince him to side with me later, and he’s not going to be using these specific attacks as BioThunderbirmon, so…”_  
  
I mentally sighed. “You know, you could try something like that too.”  
  
He looked startled. “Uhh, what?”  
  
I hesitated, but it was a bit late to decide not to do this. “You said trying to use it just sends it down the drain. Have you tried letting it be for a while before you try to use it?”  
  
He put his hand to his chin, thinking. “I… don’t think so.” He brightened up. “Definitely worth a shot!” He walked away in the direction of his set of dummies, muttering to himself.  
  
Meanwhile, I was having second thoughts. _“Not sure that was the right thing to do, but… Well, he’d have figured it out on his own eventually. Probably. I just gave him a push in the right direction, and now he probably likes me more.”_  
  
_“But was it worth it?”_  
  
I shook my head. _“Not like I can change it now. Let’s focus on an idea that might actually work this time.”_  
  
I got back in front of the current dummy, focusing inward on the little flicker. I raised my claws, but didn’t attack yet. I steadied my breathing, and did all I could to focus. In… out… in… out… grow the flame…  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

  
I grit my teeth when it disappeared again, but it was an improvement in efficiency if nothing else. At least this way I didn’t have to actually attack every time. In… out… in… out… grow the flame…  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

* * *

  
I had spent almost an hour doing nothing but, essentially, meditating. Kouki seemed to be doing something similar, if the lack of either explosions or muttered cursing was anything to go by. I was, however, making progress. The flicker was bigger now, and it took slightly longer for it to disappear.  
  
In… out… in… out… grow the flame…  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

[Warning: Digital Hazard Containment Damaged: 98% stability]

  
Again it flickered away, but it had grown again. I decided to take a minor break from that and try the other two attacks I could use in melee.  
  
Once again, I focused on the flicker, but this time I thought of a sword. I swung my claws, gripping an imaginary blade.  
  
“Kurogane Maru!”  


[Error 404: Required_Object: Blade not found]

  
Nothing happened. The flicker seemed to have grown for a moment, before dwindling back down to its new normal size. I nodded and muttered to myself. “Okay. Didn’t really expect that one to work. On to Fighting Spirit.”  
  
Fighting Spirit was unlike Guilmon’s other attacks, in that it wasn’t actually an attack. It was a buff, that made the next attack I used stronger. I went back to my quasi-meditation to try it. I reached for the flicker-  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Category: DNA Charge]

  
-and it disappeared. I frowned, annoyed. _“Damn. I might not have needed the force multiplier, but it would have been nice to have. That said, look on the bright side. Now I can work on two attacks at once!”_  
  
I sighed, and went back to trying for Hazard Claw.  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

[Warning: Digital Hazard Containment Damaged: 97% stability]

  
I gave a small smile as the flicker grew just a bit more. _“Is it just me, or is it getting easier?”_  
  
My smile turned into a smirk as my thoughts took a slightly different path. _“I wonder if this kind of resistance is why Guilmon never used these attacks in Tamers? Though to be fair, in Tamers they could all load data, so they could afford to use the weaker attacks.”_  
  
I snorted. _“’Weaker’ he says, about attacks that turned a dummy into scraps and blew a six-foot-wide hole in concrete. Though I wonder what loading data would actually be like?”_  


[Access Attempt Detected on Restricted Function: Data Harvesting Package. Requesting Authorization from Administrator: Kurata]

  
I thought about it for a few seconds, then paled as I remembered where I was, and almost more importantly, what the only things in this world with that kind of ability actually were. _“Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope. Gizumon are not something to want to be.”_

* * *

  
_Kurata checked his phone as he rode the elevator to Director Hashima’s office to interrupt Samson’s meeting. If he could get there in time, he might be able to convince the Director to let him deal with Merukimon. He had a general idea of what he’d say, along the lines of ‘pretend to side with Merukimon and convince the Director to try negotiations first’ or something. He could work the details out as he went along, it wasn’t a big deal._  
  
_What was a big deal was the incredibly worrying amount of errors and warnings coming from Jack’s Digivice. From the looks of things he’d been repeatedly trying to access a Digital Hazard for just over an hour. What’s worse, from the more recent updates it looked like he was actually getting somewhere with it. He sent a message to one of his guards to tell Jack to knock it off until he got back and could explain the concept himself._  
  
_He sighed. Jack may seem to somehow know more about Digimon than most people he knew, which was saying something considering his job, but it seemed there were certain important things that he hadn’t learned._  
  
_He deleted all of the messages pertaining to the Digital Hazard and was left with just two odd lines. “What? He tried to access an actual DNA Charge? How in the world?” He sighed. “Just another thing to ask about when I get back, I suppose. I’m not sure I even _want_ to know what in the world caused a ‘missing sword’ message.”_  
  
_He set a new rule on his alerts, so that messages about failed attempts to access the Hazard would be ignored, and was immediately greeted with an even more shocking alert._  
  
_Kurata gaped at his phone for a moment. “WHAT!? I don’t… what? How? How does he even know that that’s possible?”_  
  
_He spent a few moments calming himself, tried to think it through rationally, and failed. He just couldn’t see how in the world Jack could possibly have known that that was an option. He shouldn’t even know what Gizumon _were_, for crying out loud, how could he possibly know that he had access to their abilities through his Digivice?_  
  
_It never even crossed Kurata’s mind that this might not be intentional. The Gizumon OS the Digivices were designed with wouldn’t have sent him that request if Jack hadn’t somehow managed to envision almost exactly what the data harvesting process was like. He may know a lot about Digimon, but there was nothing else out there that could do what his Gizumon did._  
  
_He looked back at his phone again. Another two warnings about the Hazard’s containment being damaged had popped up. He made his decision._  
  
_“Screw it. If he’s smart enough to figure out he can ask for this he’s earned the right to get it. But he can work out how it all works for himself.”_  
  
_He approved the request and looked at the floor indicator. He then cursed and jogged down the hallway, since it seemed that he’d been at the Director’s floor doing nothing for over a minute._


	6. Firestarter

I managed to get the flame to grow one more time before one of the guards came over and let me know that Kurata wanted me to ‘stop whatever it is you’re doing and go back to normal attacks’ and that he’d explain more when he got back. It was a bit worrying for a moment, but I figured one of the guards had reported that as far as they could see I’d essentially been taking a nap for an hour or so.  
  
There wasn’t much longer to go before lunch, so I’d decided to turn a few more dummies into scrap when I heard Kouki jubilantly yell “**Summon!**” and a ball of blue fire shot past me, missing only by a few inches, and slammed into the wall leaving a coating of ice anywhere it touched. Judging by the explosion that came from the other side of the room, the fireball summoned by that attack had gone in the opposite direction.  
  
I turned to look and saw Kouki literally jumping for joy and punching the air in triumph at having got a different attack working. “Haha! Yes! It worked! It finally worked!” He concentrated for a moment, red and blue flames gathering in his hands, before firing off the attack again. “**Summon!**”  
  
The fireballs shot off again, leaving trails of ice and fire in their wake. They each destroyed a dummy, and coated the dummies around them in their respective elements in the process.  
  
I whistled faintly at the destruction. It was a pretty big step up from his previous attempts. Apparently, he noticed, since he walked over with a huge grin on his face. “Oh man, that was awesome! Thanks for helping me figure it out, I’d have been stuck on that for ages!” His smile dropped a bit when he saw my still-intact dummy though. “…Ah. Still having trouble with yours? It took a while to build up to a point I could use mine, so maybe you just need-“  
  
I cut him off with a wave of my hand and a smile, ignoring the nagging feeling in the back of my head that told me I really shouldn’t have helped him. “I’m making decent progress, the feeling of potential is a heck of a lot bigger now. Probably wouldn’t take much more to make it usable, but apparently the Professor wants me to do other stuff besides meditate for a while, so I’m going to get a better handle on the other stuff until lunchtime. Thanks for the help though, I appreciate it.”  
  
He didn’t seem to mind at all that I’d interrupted him if his still-wide grin was any indication. “No problem! I’m going to see if I can get the ice by itself now, just to balance things out. Good luck with your stuff.”  
  
We went our separate ways then, destroying dummies with an enthusiasm that suggested they’d insulted our mothers. Kouki leapt around with reckless abandon, firing off projectiles at any dummies he saw that weren’t on my side. Meanwhile, I proceeded with methodical efficiency, combining my new skills with my mobility training from yesterday to get faster and faster at destroying them until, by the time the guards called us for lunch, I was running through crowds of dummies at speeds that humans couldn’t reach without a vehicle, leaving behind nothing but broken scraps in my wake. It was both exhilarating and vaguely terrifying that I was barely winded by the end.  
  
We walked back to the cafeteria together after he turned back to human. He grumbled half-heartedly about how I got to stay as a ‘kick-ass dinosaur’ and he had to be human. He stopped and looked a bit embarrassed when I replied by grumbling in a joking tone about how he got to have working legs.  
  
We had lunch in an amiable silence, not really needing to say anything. When we were done, we moved to go the same way, but the guards separated us at the first turn. “Jack needs to go to a sturdier area to practise his ranged attacks. You’ll meet back up later if you both make enough progress.”  
  
We wished each other good luck as we went our separate ways. I was taken to an elevator just down the corridor, and the guard pressed the down button. The ride took longer than I was expecting, though at least there was no awful elevator music.  
  


* * *

  
Eventually I stepped out into a much more solid-looking corridor. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all bare concrete, and the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling every few metres looked like they’d been picked specifically to be cheap and easy to replace.  
  
I was led down a few unmarked grey corridors until we reached a long room. I noted on the way in that the walls were at least a foot thick. _“Sturdier indeed. Kurata does _not_ mess around.”_  
  
There was another door halfway down the room, larger than the one I’d come through. I saw why a few moments later, as a pair of guards rolled some sheets of metal through it on a dolly. I looked around, and there didn’t seem to be anything else here, so I waited for them to finish whatever they were doing.  
  
They got the sheets set up with about a foot between them and the long wall, and I noticed they were different thicknesses. Having a good idea of what was going on, I turned to the guard that brought me there. Before I could ask, he spoke.  
  
“The professor hasn’t had enough free time since this morning’s incident to record a briefing for you, so he’s left it up to me. You seem reasonably smart, so can you guess what these are for?”  
  
I blinked for a moment, trying to figure out why Kurata would be busy, before I realised I should probably answer the question. “To see what kind of shielding I can get through?”  
  
He grunted. “Close. To see what you _can’t_ get through, so we can coat the room properly. We know concrete by itself isn’t going to stop you.”  
  
“Huh. I’ll start on the thinner ones then. What range should I be at?”  
  
“About the middle of the room should do. Can you do a continuous stream of fire?”  
  
I thought for a moment. “Not that I can think of. Just an exploding fireball and possibly a quick wide-area blast of fire.”  
  
He nodded. “Use the explosive one then. It’s more likely to get through, so it’s what we’ll check.”  
  
Dutifully, I lined myself up in front of the first sheet. I didn’t have high hopes for this one. It could barely support its own weight. But I suppose they had to at least try it.  
  
“**Pyro Sphere!**”  
  
As I thought, the sheet was reduced to so much molten slag, and the wall behind it didn’t do much better. I moved to the next one.  
  
“**Pyro Sphere!**”  
  
I received roughly the same result, though the pieces of slag may have been slightly bigger. I looked at the remaining sheets and sighed. _“This is going to take a while”_  
  


* * *

  
After some time it was determined that just under a foot of whatever metal they were using would be required if we didn’t want to risk holes in the building. I waited in the halls for a few minutes as the guards plated one of the nearby rooms for me.  
  
Once I was allowed in, it was clear that this would be roughly the same setup as in the gym above, but longer. I looked at the many dummies scattered around, then over to the guard in charge of me. He smiled dryly. “Make sure you wait until all of us normals are out of here before you go to town on them.”  
  
He took a quick look around before talking into his radio briefly and nodding at me before heading through a small door I hadn’t noticed. I turned back to the dummies, grinning. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them, I had mentally replaced all of the dummies’ faces with Kurata’s, as I had with the last batch in the gym. _“Time to try something new.”_ I aimed in the rough direction of a group of three dummies by the wall, a little over fifteen feet away.  
  
“**Guil Shot!**”  
  
There was a quick burst of red, and suddenly everything in that direction was on fire. The fires on metal burned themselves out quickly, but the dummies were consumed in less than a minute, with nothing but a pile of ash and a reverse shadow in the soot on the wall to show that they were even there.  
  
I stared at the results for a moment, frozen. _“Jesus Christ, that’s terrifying.”_  
  
I shook myself out of it and moved on to the next batch to blow up.  
  


* * *

  
_The hall door to the observation room clicked open. Mags glanced around at the raised eyebrows and pale faces and sighed. “I _did_ tell you he left a six-foot crater in concrete. What were you expecting?”_  
  
_A few of those present glanced around until one spoke up. “An RPG? A mortar? I don’t know, but I know I wasn’t expecting _that._” He pointed out a charred section of the corner on one of the monitors they were watching Jack on. Mags squinted at it._  
  
_“What, reverse shadows? That’s not that surprising, right? It means he couldn’t just ignore the dummies completely.” There were a few moments of silence. Mags frowned. “What?”_  
  
_The guard that spoke before replied. “We haven’t cleared it out yet.”_  
  
_The implications hit Mags like a truck. She turned back to the monitor, and this time she saw some small piles of ash roughly where the reverse shadows started. Her throat went dry._  
  
_“Those… those were supposed to be-“_  
  
_“Completely fireproof. I know.” He sighed. “Why do you think we’re all pale as ghosts?”_  
  
_There were a few more moments of sombre silence. Mags broke it with a smile. “Just remember, everyone; he’s on our side.”_  
  
_As everyone slowly relaxed and some even started to quietly cheer Jack on as he explosively destroyed dummies from farther and farther away with near-perfect accuracy, Mags silently finished her thought. _“I wish he wasn’t, though. It’d make my job so much easier.”  
  


* * *

  
_“Huh. So my hearing is bullshit and Guil Shot can incinerate fireproof dummies in seconds. Good to know”_  
  
I lined up for the last shot this room could give me. I was at one end, and the last dummy was at the other. I was surprised by how easy it felt to make my fireballs hit their mark – after just a few tries it seemed about as easy as poking something accurately.  
  
_“If poking something made it explode violently, that is.” _I amended as my last shot struck home, the dummy reduced to burnt scraps and the armoured wall starting to glow a dull red.  
  
A faint round of applause started up in the observation room, and I heard someone ask “Do you think we should move on to blast intensity or moving targets next?”  
  
Before I could stop myself I answered “Moving targets, please. I’m pretty sure I can’t do much with the intensity on these things.” Immediately the lingering applause stopped and the room went silent. I turned to look at where the sounds had been coming from with a toothy grin.  
  
After a moment, an amused voice that I recognised spoke up, quietly at first. “You go get some BASICs and you make sure the speaker is actually off. Good. Jack, if you can hear this, please repeat after me: Damon, Norstein, Fujieda.”  
  
I tried to raise my eyebrows at that. Those were the last names of the main characters after all – I think, anyway, I wasn’t sure on Yoshi’s – but it turned out I didn’t have eyebrows anymore, so I settled for cocking my head to one side slightly as I replied.  
  
“Damon, Norstein, Fujieda. And I was under the impression I wouldn’t be seeing you again, Mags?”  
  
There was yet another pause. I seemed to be causing quite a few of those lately. “There should be some kind of rule against being so terrifying and so adorable at the same time. I think I said you probably wouldn’t see me again since we have a rotation. I got rotated down here. Also, can you _actually_ see me? Because at this point I wouldn’t put it past you to secretly have had x-ray vision this whole time.”  
  
I repressed a laugh at that as I squinted at the wall for a second. “Hmmm… Nope, doesn’t look like it. Though if I was going to have something like that it’d probably be infra-red, not x-rays.” I gave the wall a flat stare. “Also, please don’t call me adorable where I can hear it.”  
  
Muffled laughter from the room, and not just from Mags. “So where _can_ we say it? On the moon?”  
  
The renewed laughter that ensued from that was interrupted by the main door to the room opening. A pair of guards walked in carrying a large box between them, though it seemed more due to size than weight. They set it down near the door and one of them addressed me while the other set about getting it open. “Here are your moving targets for the next hour or so. Please avoid shooting until we’re out of the room, I’m quite attached to my limbs and I’d rather keep it that way.”  
  
I chuckled and nodded, waiting for them to finish. When the guard that was fiddling with the box finally got it open, though, I let out a strangled whine at the contents.  
  
The guard turned around, holding one of the purple and green monstrosities that were definitely much smaller than I remembered from the show, and seemed to mistake my expression for one of fear rather than shock. “Er, don’t worry, don’t worry, they’re not actual Digimon, just something the Professor came up with.”  
  
I forced myself to speak, my voice shaky. “I… I know that. They feel… wrong.” It was true, too. I wasn’t sure how, but my new instincts were screaming at me that the things needed to be destroyed, and knowing what they were, I was in full agreement.  
  
The guards went pale and hurried through their preparations much faster than they had been. “W-well, I guess that’ll make blowing them up much more satisfying, then, but please wait until we’ve set the whole thing up.”  
  
It took them under a minute before they had eight of the miniature Gizumon distributed across the room and ready to go, and once they finished they were out the door at speeds that would make athletes jealous.  
  
I faintly heard Mags’ voice through the wall. “Quick rundown: They’re Gizumon BASIC, a stripped-down version of one of the Professor’s other projects. They’ve got a little laser weapon, but they’re weak enough that they’ll just give you a nasty sting if they hit you. They’re pretty agile and surprisingly fast, so don’t feel down if you can’t get them all by dinner. Ready?”  
  
I nodded.  
  
“Go!”  
  
Immediately, the Gizumon shot around the room at speed. I decided to focus on one at a time to start with, and was immediately pelted with lasers from the other seven. Frankly, calling it a ‘nasty sting’ was overselling it. It felt more like a light pinch; enough to be annoying, but not actually painful.  
  
I got a moment to focus and fired off a **“Pyro Sphere!”**  
  
It missed completely as the Gizumon in question jinked to one side at the last moment and I was bombarded with another wave of lasers in retaliation.  
  
I started to growl lightly as I glared at the Gizumon. This was going to be _annoying_.  
  


* * *

  
By the time dinnertime rolled around, I was thoroughly pissed off. The closest I’d been able to get was scorching one with the edge of a Guil Shot, and while it may have apparently put the thing out of commission, it didn’t come with the catharsis that blowing them up would have. The occasional stray thought about how it was entirely possible that something I’d done was responsible for their creation didn’t help, though I managed to shoot that down due to lack of evidence. After all, it was possible that Kurata simply hadn’t used them in canon because they were so weak. I just didn’t think it was very likely.  
  
All of which together is probably why when I walked through the cafeteria doors glaring darkly at the world, Kouki looked around, saw me, and proceeded to go pale, start coughing on his food, and fall off his chair all at once.  
  
I blinked, easing up on the glare as I helped him up off the floor. I still looked a bit annoyed and Kouki was still a bit pale when I got back to the table with my dinner afterwards. The promised pastries definitely helped with that.  
  
He picked at his food for a minute, working up the nerve to ask. “So, uh, what happened to you? You looked like you were going to murder someone.” He played it off with a nervous chuckle.  
  
I took some deep breaths to help calm down, some of which may have included food, before answering. “Target practice. With moving targets that I can’t seem to hit and which make my new instincts scream at me to destroy them.” I sighed, glaring at my food for a moment. “It’s a bit frustrating.”  
  
Kouki flinched. When I cocked my head in a silent question, he explained “When you look angry, your eyes turn into slits and I get a sudden reminder that I’m sitting across from a velociraptor with claws that do more damage than a shotgun and fireballs that hit harder than RPGs.”  
  
I blinked. _“Huh. Apparently I’m terrifying.”_ But Kouki apparently wasn’t done, since he sighed.  
  
“And then you do something like that and suddenly your eyes get ridiculously round and you look more like a little kid’s oversized stuffed animal.”  
  
Incredibly bemused, I went to the counter and got a look at my reflection in one of the shinier appliances while I got my next round of food. Shifting between ‘angry glare’ and ‘puppy-dog eyes’ a few times, I reflected that it reminded me of Toothless from the How to Train your Dragon movies.  
  
We ate in awkward silence for a few minutes before Kouki finished. He started to say something, but stopped before he got past opening his mouth. He did it again. When it looked like he was going to do it again, I interrupted it. “Just spit it out already.”  
  
He visibly collected himself. “Would you mind if I took a picture with you? With both faces?”  
  
Of all the things he could have said, that was not what I was expecting to come out of his mouth. “Um. Sure? I guess I don’t have a problem with that.”  
  
He grinned and walked around the table to sit next to me, pulling out his phone. I did the angry face first, since I didn’t think I could keep a straight face that long. We looked over them afterwards and Kouki decided they were good enough that he didn’t need to retake them.  
  
We walked out of the cafeteria together, smiling, and were only half-surprised to find Kurata waiting for us again. He was grinning widely too, which just looked _odd_ on him with no malice in it.  
  
He clasped his hands together, sounding genuinely enthusiastic. “Well, Jack, Kouki, this evening we’ve got a special surprise activity planned for you two. You’ll need to take turns, since we’ve only got one room we can do it in. Jack will go first, since he’s stronger and therefore more likely to finish quickly. Kouki, you’ll have the spare time to finish working on your new attacks. Congratulations on figuring those out by the way.” He turned and started walking towards the elevator. “This way Jack.”  
  
I followed him promptly, waving to Kouki as I went. I still had a smile on, but I had a bad feeling about this. After all, if it made Kurata this happy, it probably wasn’t anything good.


	7. RAGE, a.k.a. Why you do not piss off a Guilmon (and live)

_Mags, as the highest-ranking guard present, was supervising the clean-up of Jack’s afternoon training. All had seemed to be going well. The remains of the dummies were cleared up without issue and the damage to the metal plates was noted so that adjustments could be made for later on._  
  
_Which made it that much more worrying when one of the guards tasked to the Gizumon walked up to her nervously and gave her a report. “Three of the eight Gizumon are missing, Ma’am.”_  
  
_She snapped to look at him immediately, giving him her full attention. Those Gizumon were designed to be expendable, yes, but Kurata still didn’t want them to be wasted. “Missing? How?”_  
  
_The guard flinched. “B-based on the footage, we believe that Jack was more accurate – and powerful – than we or he had accounted for.”_  
  
_Mags felt the beginnings of a scowl. “Don’t give me that. If he’d destroyed them, there would have been Digieggs left over. We’ve seen them get destroyed before, we know they’ve got enough data in them for that.”_  
  
_“I know Ma’am, but the feedback from the missing units cutting out corresponds exactly with the timing and position of three of Jack’s attacks, and we don’t have any other reasons for their disappearance.”_  
  
_Mags let her scowl cross her face as she sighed, frustrated. “Fine. What’s your name?”_  
  
_“T-Toshi, Ma’am. Katsuya Toshi.”_  
  
_“I’ll let the Professor know, but I’ll be mentioning your name if he asks for the person in charge of them.”_  
  
_The lower-ranked guard paled and left as she moved to a slightly quieter area and pulled out her radio to call the Professor._  
  
_“Sir?”_  
  
_“Ah, Margaret. Did something come up?”_  
  
_“I’m afraid so, sir. Three of the Gizumon BASIC are missing.”_  
  
_“What? Missing?” Kurata’s tone changed from one of shock to one of amusement. “Let me guess. There are no Digieggs, but no-one took them, and their destruction matches up with some of Jack’s attacks?”_  
  
“Oh for the love of-“_  
  
Mags ground her teeth in annoyance. “I don’t suppose you could have let us know this would happen in advance? Or at least enlighten us now so I can reassure people with something more substantive than ‘The Professor says so.’”_  
  
_Kurata sighed. “Well, I had no guarantee that it would happen in the first place. But yes, I suppose an explanation is in order. You see, earlier today, Jack managed to tap into an ability that previously, only Gizumon had access to; namely the ability to completely destroy a Digimon and load the resulting data. Given the nature of his attacks, and the Gizumon BASIC’s paltry data and impressive stealth, it’s not surprising that their destruction went entirely unnoticed.”_  
  
_Mags was silent for a moment, taking that in. “I… I see, sir. Am I cleared to tell the others?”_  
  
_Kurata chuckled. “Of course. Don’t go spreading it around too far, but you can tell whoever was involved. Was there anything else to report?”_  
  
_“No sir.”_  
  
_“Very well then. I expect a full report along with the video by the usual time. Dismissed.”_  
  
_Mags returned the radio to her belt and just stood there for a few moments, taking deep breaths to collect herself. _“This… this changes things. I need to let Dad know about this. The Gizumon were bad enough, but…”  
  
_She shook her head, planning out two reports in her head, for two very different people. _“What was the argument even about anyway? I can’t even remember and it’s kept me from contacting him for over a month. I really need to just swallow my pride and do it.”  
  
_She walked back to the others to tell them about the news. Though she suspected their reactions would be somewhat different to hers._  
  


* * *

  
Kurata had some worrying conversation topics for me as we walked together through the base.  
  
“Well, Jack, we sure have a lot to talk about. Tell me, does the phrase ‘Digital Hazard’ mean anything to you?”  
  
Based on his slightly annoyed tone, I guessed he’d be surprised if I knew the full details. Though I was pretty sure it was connected to the fact that I’d been trying to draw on one for over an hour, so he might not believe me if I told him I didn’t know anything. I went for the middle ground.  
  
“I’ve heard the phrase, and I’m pretty sure it’s related to the symbol on my chest.”  
  
Kurata sighed. “Well, you’re not wrong. Near as I can tell, that mark generally means that the Digimon in question is or can become a Digital Hazard. A Digital Hazard is something with the potential to cause severe damage to the Digital World, and in all likelihood by extension the Real World. Which begs the question; what in the world were you doing for an hour that caused me to get warnings every few seconds about you trying to access one?”  
  
“Warnings? How? I’m pretty sure there were no outward signs of it. If there were I’d have noticed.”  
  
He gave me an unimpressed look. “Jack, I installed a very expensive Digivice into you that changes you on a fundamental level. If I didn’t make sure I had some way to monitor the process to make sure it wasn’t killing you, I’d be an idiot.”  
  
That gave me pause for a moment and I hoped I was doing a better job of concealing my horror at the idea of Kurata having 24/7 monitoring of everything about me via the Digivice. “So what kind of things would you get messages about?”  
  
“Error reports when you try to do things you shouldn’t or can’t. Damage reports if you get hurt. That kind of thing. I can’t read your mind, if that’s what you’re worried about. Digicores are essentially black boxes with ridiculously byzantine encryption I haven’t put much effort into figuring out.”  
  
I let out a small sigh of relief. Assuming he was telling the truth about that, anyway. “Do you think I could get those messages as well? As, I don’t know, a voice in my head or something? It’d be nice to know when there’s something I can’t do if it’s because I haven’t tried enough yet or because it’s locked off.”  
  
He looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Hmm. I suppose there’s no reason I couldn’t set that up... You’d have to be human for me to modify your Digivice like that, though. And you’ll be getting other modifications if this goes well, so we can save it for afterwards and do them all at once.” He gave me a knowing look. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you avoided my question earlier, though. What were you doing that needed access to a Digital Hazard?”  
  
“Guilmon’s best melee attack. Hazard Claw. I couldn’t get it to work, but it seemed like I was making progress, so I kept at it. I thought it might be related to the Hazard, but I figured that since I’m a Rookie it probably couldn’t be too bad.”  
  
He shook his head. “Well, you managed to do a bit of damage to your Digivice. That would require another round of surgery to fix if you broke it, so I recommend not trying to use it anymore if you can avoid it.”  
  
I shuddered. Breaking my Digivice was not something I wanted to happen.  
  
We continued in silence for a while. I was once again thankful for the lack of elevator music, as this descent seemed even longer than before. I was intimately aware that I was in a confined space with the guy who caused every bad thing in the series. I was also aware that, if I tried to do anything about that, I would be completely screwed in multiple ways. After all, if he was dead, then a) DATS would probably never find out properly that he was evil, and would likely see me as a rogue element that murdered one of their top scientists, b) I’d have to make it out of the building without getting killed, not terribly likely given how much I didn’t know about the place, and c)… I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.  
  
I’d never really liked the idea of death. That seems like something that most people would laugh off as obvious, and it was, but it was more so with me. Even in video games, where that kind of thing had no consequences, I hated killing and pointless death. I was pretty sure that, even if everything lined up for me and the world was actively cheering me on somehow, I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to kill him.  
  
I frowned and took some deeper breaths, trying to get my mind off of that morbid topic.  
  
Eventually we arrived at the right floor.  
  
Before he opened the door, Kurata snapped his fingers and turned to me. “Whoops. Almost forgot something. I would very much prefer for you to be human when you start the activity.”  
  
My head whipped around to look at him. “What?!”  
  
He seemed perfectly calm, but I could smell something odd coming from him as he shook his head. “Calm down, calm down. It would make the activity much more meaningful if you started it as a human. You can turn back to a Digimon as soon as you want after that. Besides, I don’t think you’ve actually turned back yet, and I’d at least like to know that you can.”  
  
The door opened with a ‘ding’ to reveal a suddenly very nervous guard. He was holding a wheelchair. More of the odd smell was wafting off of him, quite a bit more than from Kurata.  
  
I glared at Kurata for a few long seconds before breaking eye contact and looking away. “Fine. I’ll be human right before it starts, but I’m not turning back until the last possible moment.”  
  
“Wonderful.” The smell had briefly intensified before it all but disappeared from Kurata. Now that I noticed, it had always been there, just faintly, covered up by everything else. I was beginning to get an idea of what it meant, and my guess was all but confirmed a moment later when I glared at the guard on the way past him and the smell came back in force.  
  
_“So I can literally smell fear. Wonderful. All I need now is some kind of enhanced sight and I’d be a perfect horror villain.”_  
  
We walked a little further on while I experimented a little more with my sense of smell, trying to see if I recognised anything and where it had come from. I stopped fairly quickly after I smelled something I most definitely did _not_ want to know about from a supply closet.  
  
Glancing at Kurata and trying to think about anything other than what had happened in that closet, I asked “This ‘activity’. I don’t think you’ve actually told me what it is yet.”  
  
Kurata got that annoying ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know’ smirk. “Well, part of the activity is seeing how you react to the activity, and that works best if you don’t know what it is going in.”  
  
“So what you’re saying is that I’m going into whatever this is blind and crippled. Joy.”  
  
He raised a finger and opened his mouth as if he was about to protest my evaluation, then dropped it with a shrug. “If it works, it works. And we’re here, so you don’t have to wait very long. Besides, it’ll be fairly self-explanatory once you’re in there.”  
  
He typed a code into a keypad and opened the door we’d stopped at. I followed him in and found myself in a small room with two doors on the far wall and not much else. Kurata turned.  
  
“Well, here we are. Your activity is through the door on the right, I and some others will observe from the room on the left. You know what to do.”  
  
With a sigh, I sat in the wheelchair – better to do it first rather than clamber into it afterwards, even if it wasn’t very comfortable. I felt around in my mind, like I had with my attempts at Hazard Claw, only this time I gathered up the feeling that I’d used to gain this form in the first place and then just… released it.  
  
There was a brief feeling of weightlessness before I felt human again. Which in this case, meant weaker, with duller senses, and nothing below the waist. I was still wearing the bland grey outfit I’d had when I woke up yesterday.  
  
Kurata had an odd expression on his face, but it was quickly replaced with his usual grin.  
  
“Wonderful! Good to know you’re actually capable of that. Well, just go on in when you’re ready. Oh, and, one last thing…”  
  
He walked up next to me and finished in a low voice.  
  
“It wasn’t a recording.”  
  
With that cryptic statement he turned and went to the observation room accompanied by the guard that had brought the wheelchair, leaving my alone.  
  
_“What? What wasn’t a recording? One of his tutorials?”_  
  
I shook my head and wheeled myself over to the right door.  
  
_“Let’s just get this over with”_  
  


* * *

  
_The observation room was filled with the same guards that had overseen Jack’s last round of testing, and they had done up the room accordingly. It seemed that no-one had made Kurata aware of this beforehand, as everyone suddenly went silent as he walked in, meaning that the only sounds remaining were those of the microwave making popcorn and the hum of the refrigerated drinks cooler in the corner keeping their sodas cold._  
  
_Kurata looked around at the worried faces, two of whom seemed to currently be putting up some kind of banner._  
  
_Cocking an eyebrow, he turned to the next most senior person in the room. “Margaret. Care to explain?”_  
  
_Mags, the only person who had kept a blank face, replied evenly. “Well, sir, some of the guys thought that since Jack utterly annihilated most of the tests we threw at him, his fight was practically guaranteed to be sufficiently impressive to warrant this setup.”_  
  
_The microwave dinged as its current load finished cooking. Kurata could now see that the banner was a hastily-put-together affair with ‘Kick his ass, Jack!” written on it in bright red lettering._  
  
_The room was silent for a moment as Kurata walked to the centre seat closest to the viewing monitors. Nothing happened as he sat down, until he spoke a few seconds later._  
  
_“Jack is capable of hearing through walls this thick. If you want to make more popcorn, do it now, because if anyone makes noise during this fight and distracts him, there will be _consequences_.”_  
  
_The room was silent for another moment before bursting into a flurry of hectic motion. Mags calmly walked through the fracas carrying two sodas and two bags of hot popcorn, sat next to Kurata, and handed him one of each._  
  
_Nodding his appreciation to her, he opened his bag and drink and stared intently at the monitors as Jack walked in. He wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a thing._  
  


* * *

  
I passed through the door. It clicked shut behind me. I didn’t hear it, my focus entirely on the chained-up samurai Digimon hanging at the other end of the room. I felt slightly faint as memories I didn't want were dragged up to the forefront of my mind.  
  
_-**PAIN**-_  
  
_-the sword blade protruding from my stomach-_  
  
_-cruel, mocking laughter-_  
  
He looked up and confusion danced in his eyes for a moment before recognition bloomed and he sneered. “Hah! You’re that pathetic fool I skewered a few nights ago. I’m surprised you’re still alive. Normally those whose life-force I drain barely last minutes, let alone days.”  
  
_-a child’s voice, broken by sobs-_  
  
_-“Please… somebody help…”-_  
  
I froze, my blood seeming to turn to ice. _“It… wasn’t… a…”_  
  
It made sense. After all, Musyamon weren’t exactly renowned for making audio recordings. And even if they were, he still would have had to get the audio from somewhere.  
  
“Musyamon.” My voice was dead, emotionless. Deceptively calm. It was all I could do not to have some kind of meltdown.  
  
“Human.”  
  
“Tell me. When I went to that house, I heard a child’s cry. Was that actually-“  
  
“Horribly wounded, but alive and genuine, yes. How else was I to lure in soft-hearted fools like yourself whose life-force I could drain?” He started laughing.  
  
Distantly, I registered that the sparks at my hand were brighter and more numerous than last time. More active, too. Still not quite the Champion-level ball of fire, but not far off.  
  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Ultimate-level BioHybrid DNA Charge]  
  
[Allowing unrestricted variant: Rookie-level BioHybrid DNA Charge]

  
I wasn’t surprised. It was fueled primarily by hatred after all. And I was generating quite a lot of that at the moment. Knowing that he’d engineered a trap, hurting an innocent child in the process, specifically made to catch those with a conscience while letting the heartless and the selfish pass by… that was not something anyone but a saint could encounter without feeling hatred.  
  
I brought my burning right hand to my left. “You’re going to die now.” He laughed harder. “BioHybrid DNA Charge.”  
  
The Digivice greedily took the charge, and a moment of disorientation later I was BioGuilmon again.  
  
At the same time, Musyamon’s chains fell to the ground and he landed on his feet, no longer laughing, but still smirking. “Hah! Pathetic. I don’t know how you did this, but you’re still just a Rookie, and I’m a Champion!”  
  
He bared his chest, his arms at his sides as he walked forwards. “Just to show how little of a threat you really are to me, I’ll even let you have the first shot!”  
  
I heard the muffled laughter a few moments later from the observation room. I didn’t smile.  
  
_“Well. If he’s going to give me a shot, then I’d better make it count as much as I can.”_  
  
I knew I hadn’t been able to pull off the attack yet. But considering what I knew about the Hazard, I could likely pull it off now. I got up and walked towards Musyamon. _“In… out… grow the flame…”_  
  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

[Warning: Digital Hazard Containment Damaged: 90% Stability]

  
I drew closer. _“In… out… grow the flame…”_  
  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

[Warning: Digital Hazard Containment Damaged: 85% Stability]

  
I drew back my claws as I threw the rage I was feeling into the flame in my mind.  
  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Digital Hazard]

[Warning: Digital Hazard Containment Damaged: 80% Stability]

[Warning: Containment no longer sufficient to prevent Rookie-level use of the Hazard.]

[Forbidden status removed from Rookie-level use of the Hazard to prevent further containment damage.]

  
It had grown to over twice the size it had had when I entered and my claw finally burst into crimson flames.  
  
**“HAZARD CLAW!”**  
  
There was a flash of noise and light. My claws only met very slight resistance on their path.  
  
When my vision cleared, the entire room in front of me was in flames. There were three parallel molten gashes in the wall to my right, and through them I could see that the next room over was also on fire. And Musyamon…  
  
There was a large section of his chest missing along with his right arm, and the rest of him was showing severe damage, but he struggled to his feet regardless. I ignored him, looking to my left, where he’d dropped his sword.  
  
I flicked the tip of my tail, and the sword that had run me through two days ago landed in my palm. What was left of Musyamon’s pained face contorted into a snarl. “Give… give that back, you unworthy-“  
  


[Blade Acquired: Modifying blade to fit parameters]

  
Musyamon was cut off, his snarl replaced with a pale shock as the sword glowed yellow and white Digicode appeared on the side of the blade, replacing the current inscription:   
  
The sword grew hot in my claws, turning red as it changed shape. The Digicode warped and shattered, forming a new design:   
  
Finally, the Digicode faded and the sword cooled, revealing its new [design](http://wikimon.net/images/8/88/Guilmon_dw4.png).  
  
I walked towards the now-catatonic samurai. Raising his- _my_ sword as I came.  
  


[Killing intent detected. Use Package: Data Harvesting? Y/N]

  
I swung my blade.  
  


[No answer received. Default answer set to ‘Yes’.]

[Future killing blows will require deliberate deactivation not to use Package: Data Harvesting]

  
“**Kurogane Maru”**  
  
I was expecting him to burst into data and for an egg to form. I was definitely _not_ expecting for the egg to _also_ burst into data, or for the entire resulting data cloud to be drawn towards and into me. It felt… oddly good. I knew on an intellectual level that it was wrong, that it shouldn’t be happening, but that didn’t mean that feeling refreshed didn’t feel good.  
  
I blinked. There was a sound coming from the observation room. It sounded like… applause?  
  


* * *

  
_For tense moments, no-one dared move. The spectacle they had just witnessed had terrified everyone present into silence, with good reason. After all, if he’d used his left claw rather than his right, they’d all have died. But then Kurata began to clap, and soon the applause and cheers were loud enough that they could barely hear themselves think._  
  
_Mags had forced a smile onto her face and was applauding politely, but on the inside she was screaming. _“That tears it. I’m taking my vacation tomorrow and spilling everything to my dad somewhere Kurata can’t hear.”  
  


* * *

  
_-Just under an hour later-_  
  
_Kouki watched the video showing Jack’s fight earlier. It didn’t have audio – Kurata said that the microphone had broken and nobody noticed until it was too late to fix it – but it was plain to see that Jack was probably capable of tearing a_ tank_ in half without even noticing, let alone a fourteen-year-old kid. He was suddenly very glad he’d never tried to fight Jack. He shuddered as he realised he probably wouldn’t be able to ever look at Jack again without seeing that cold, slit-eyed glare._  
  
_He entered the room where his fight was due to take place, his head spinning. He’d signed up to fight monsters and get stronger, sure, but… that one had been talking to Jack. He might not have heard the words but he could see their mouths moving. If they could talk… didn’t that mean they were basically people? He liked to fight, sure, but he didn’t sign up to be a murderer._  
  
_He blinked as he saw his opponent and let out a short laugh of both relief and amusement. They’d brought him a little calico cat with brown gloves._  
  
_His laugh choked off a few seconds later when the cat glared at him and spoke shakily. “Cut it out! Just… just get it over with…”_  
  
_It was then that Kouki realised he was in _way_ over his head._


	8. Bridge over Troubled Waters

I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed. I had torn through a wall and permanently killed Musyamon in a way that I definitely wasn’t supposed to be able to, and now I was getting applause for it. I wanted to just go home and bury myself in my blankets and never come out, at least not until the world stopped screwing me over. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have that option. Distantly, I noticed that Kurata had started talking over the speakers.  
  
“…itively wonderful. A brilliant, if quick, performance. You’ve definitely earned the add-ons you wanted, and some extra to boot. If you could turn back to human for me, I’ll be in with the upgrades in a moment.”  
  
I half-turned my head to see the wheelchair, and decided it could go screw itself. I moved one step back to a bit of wall that wasn’t glowing red and sat with my back leaning on it, making sure it wasn’t too hot before closing my eyes and turning back to human again.  
  
I tried to think things through, but it was no use. I was still dazed from how much had happened in so little time, and the murmur of voices from the other side of the wall, quieter but still present, wasn’t helping with my focus.  
  
I heard the door open, and I guess Kurata stumbled or something because his footsteps were odd for a moment after he came in. He made his way closer. “Could you hold up your left arm for me? The ports are a little fiddly to get to.” I complied, and shortly got a feeling of pins and needles all down that arm.  
  


[Permission granted for all Packages in Directory: Gizumon]  


[Additional Console output added: Jack]

[Permission granted for User-level Console Access]

[Permission granted for use of Digital Design Suite]

[Permission granted for Champion-level BioHybrid DNA Charge]

  
I started a little. I’d received four messages directly into my head. It was like they’d been spoken, except there was no… voice, or tone, or inflection, or… anything. The information was just _there_.  
  
After a few seconds had passed with no more messages, I asked “Is that everything?”  
  
I could practically _hear_ the damn smirk. “Yes. That’s all for now. Are you alright? You look… tired.”  
  
I sighed and brought the DNA Charge around to my left hand again, being careful not to use too much. Not because I was worried about hurting Kurata – I just guessed I’d probably get Growlmon, and if that happened I’d probably either be crushed by the too-small room or the soon-to-be collapsing building. “That’s… not wrong. I’d really like to go to bed now, if possible.”  
  
“Absolutely. Do you know the way, or…” I was already nodding my head and heading for the door, my eyes open again. “Oh, good. Well, sweet dreams.”  
  
I did my best to ignore the praise that the guards showered on me on my way through the anteroom.  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata pushed open the door to the makeshift arena, and stumbled in surprise. Not only was Jack not in his wheelchair where he’d expected him to be, but he’d somehow kept the sword in his human form. He wasn’t sure how, since based on the logs from the Digivice it had seemed like a Guilmon-specific thing, but there it was. He quickly recovered and set about adding in every upgrade he could think of that couldn’t readily backfire on him. It went slower than it should have, he kept getting distracted by Jack’s blank, tired expression. He looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, and his right arm was flushed red as though he’d got a mild burn._  
  
_If he had to guess, he’d say it was related to the massively powerful attack he’d pulled off. He wouldn’t be terribly surprised to hear that an attack, performed by a Rookie, that could probably give an Ultimate a nasty wound would have some kind of backlash._  
  
_After sending Jack on his way and sending the guards to prepare Kouki’s round, he went to re-watch the video of the fight and smiled. The video would be great to show Kouki and the others, for a number of reasons. He debated for a moment on whether to leave the audio in and use it to paint Digimon as monsters, but decided against it. After all, Kouki’s opponent would be a Mikemon, and it was all too likely that he’d decide that Digimon weren’t all bad sooner or later if he actually listened to what they said. Leaving the audio out for Kouki held more useful benefits. Leading through fear had worked so far, so why stop now?_  
  


* * *

  
_I’d made it back to my room and collapsed on my bed. I was in the starry void again. This time, though, there were a few changes._  
  
_First, the Kurogane Maru was embedded in the non-existent ground a few feet in front of me. Second, some kind of screen hovered at my left. And third, though it took me a while to notice, there were some red stars below me where before there had been nothing._  
  
_I spent a few minutes just staring into space. I… I had just… killed someone. An unrepentant monster who undoubtedly deserved it, true, but…_  
  
_I hadn’t been expecting that. I’d thought he’d revert to a digiegg. Sure, that would basically have been killing him as well, but there would have been a chance. But did that make it better or worse, considering how much of a monster he was?_  
  
_A look of horror slowly crossed my face and I began to hyperventilate as the reality of my situation sunk in. Because _he_ might have deserved it, but I’d probably be killing a lot more Digimon before I got a chance to get away from Kurata without dying, and the thought that I’d end up killing innocents who had done nothing wrong save for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time... of inflicting on others the same horror that I’d suffered through…_  
  
_It was at about that point that I descended into a full-on panic attack._  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata glared at two of his screens, trying to make sense of them. It just didn’t add up. Sure, he’d stacked the deck as much as possible in Jack’s favour, so his ferocity despite his annoying conscience was justified, but he was so sure Kouki would have shown less hesitation than he did. After all, in the time Kurata had him under surveillance he’d never shied away from attacking smaller opponents when they were human. Research showed that Mikemon and BioImpmon should be about equal in power, so that mitigated his concerns on the length of the fight somewhat, but even afterwards when the beast was at his mercy, Kouki hesitated, and looked away, and seemed to be doing everything in his power to avoid striking the final blow. He’d seemed all for killing monsters when he’d signed up._  
  
_Kurata sighed. “I may have made a mistake in taking out the audio from Jack’s video. That boy _really_ doesn’t have the right mindset. Though given that he went through with it eventually, I’ll have to reserve judgement on that decision.” He had earned the Champion level upgrade, if barely._  
  
_Kurata glanced at his other screens, showing the newer pair of BioHybrids. An odd pair, who had made odd decisions. The large mercenary had chosen one of the smallest Digimon available, and the vain genius had chosen a metal bug. Though that was at least partially Kurata’s fault for not giving them any references. It helped make sure they didn’t pick based on looks alone, and it was so funny to see their reactions afterwards. Jack had seemed to know exactly what he was looking for, but he had a hard time believing the other three would have made the same choices if they’d known what they were getting._  
  
_Finally, he glanced at the corner of his display, reminding him that he needed to wake up in about seven hours if he wanted to make sure he wasn’t late for his own expedition tomorrow. He was sorely tempted to take Jack with him, it would make things so much simpler if he had someone on his side with firepower, loyalty, and a mind of their own. He could probably pass Jack off as his newly-acquired partner too, BioHybrid- and Pseudo-DNA Charges were all but interchangeable since all that was different was who produced it. Unfortunately, Jack had no experience with the Champion level yet. While that could potentially be explained away, it would also compromise his effectiveness too much. The Gizumon XT would have to suffice._  
  
_Stretching as he got up, he shut down the system and went home for the night._  
  


* * *

  
_I wasn’t sure how long the panic attack had lasted. I wasn’t really calm, so much as too tired to have another freak-out anytime soon._  
  
_I sluggishly brought the monitor around in front of me in the hopes that I could distract myself with it. I immediately ran into a problem._  
  
_“There’s no keyboard. How do I use this thing?”_  
  


[This unit accepts directed mental and vocal input]

_The words appeared on the screen, and at the same time I heard the same kind of non-voice from earlier. I was too exhausted to be startled._

_“Well that’s handy.” I thought to myself for a moment. “What do I have any kind of access to?”_

_There was a brief pause before a wall of text appeared all at once._

[Execute Access:

-Executable: ~/Digital Design Suite/DDS

-All executables in Directory: ~/Gizumon and all sub-directories

-All executables in Directory: ~/Jack and all sub-directories

-All executables in Directory: ~/Guilmon and all sub-directories

-Executable: ~/DNA Charge/BioHybrid DNA Charge (with parameters: less than or equal to Champion level)]

[Read Access:

-Directory: ~/Digital Design Suite and all sub-directories

-All files in Directory: ~/Gizumon and all sub-directories

-All files in Directory: ~/Jack and all sub-directories

-All files in Directory: ~/Guilmon and all sub-directories]

[Write Access:

-Directory: ~/Digital Design Suite/Saved Templates

-Directory: ~/Jack and all sub-directories]

_A thought occurred while the words wrote themselves to the display._

_“Is there anything I can know about but have no access to?”_

[NULL]

_I shrugged. It was worth a shot. It wouldn’t have been impossible for Kurata to have set the permissions to none and then forgotten to actually hide one of his folders._

_I messed around with the DDS for a while, as well as some other settings, but I was getting really exhausted by that point, to the extent that it was getting hard to think coherently, so I pushed the screen away and started stargazing again, letting my mind go blank._

* * *

  
I got up late the next morning and mechanically went through the motions of cleaning myself up. I was about to leave when my reflection caught my eye.  
  
My expression was… lifeless. Blank. It more or less displayed how I was feeling to anyone that looked. I would have been fine with that if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d probably have to explain it to someone, and if Kurata noticed it might not end well. I spent a few minutes trying to get an actual expression on my face that didn’t look forced or dead, and after a few minutes came up with one that looked almost normal.  
  
I caught a faint whiff of fear from the guard on the way to the cafeteria, right before they spoke up. “Kouki and Nanami have finished their breakfast already. You might meet Ivan in the cafeteria though, he slept in too.”  
  
_“Huh. They’re here.”_ “Good to know. Thanks.”  
  
Something about my reply made the guard shiver and the scent of fear got stronger. I frowned. _“Am I really that worrying?”_  
  
Apparently so, since immediately after my expression changed, his fear grew again. He seemed all too eager to leave once we arrived.  
  
Immediately on arrival I noted Ivan’s presence at one of the tables. Not the one Kouki and I usually sat at, this one was in the corner with Ivan’s back to two walls. He gave a little wave and a big smile when he saw me come in.  
  
I waved back as a small smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. It might not have been much, but after yesterday, I’d take what little happiness I could get. Besides, if I remembered things right, Ivan was the nicest and least evil of the BioHybrids. He only joined to support his family and seemed to regret what he’d done.  
  
I piled my tray high with comfort foods – mostly pastries, waffles, and pancakes – and went to sit across from Ivan.  
  
I had a pastry in my mouth when I got there, so he took the initiative and offered a handshake. “Hi there! Nice to meet you. My name’s Ivan, what’s yours?”  
  
I swallowed my mouthful and took his hand. “Jack. Nice to meet you too.”  
  
We worked through our meals in a friendly silence. After I came back from getting my third plate, Ivan broke it. “You got pretty lucky with the name you picked, huh?”  
  
I looked up from my food, my mouth full again, and cocked my head.  
  
“You know, the list of names? You got a neat dinosaur out of it. I actually think you look kinda cute with your head like that, but I’d never say that out loud.”  
  
I choked on my food in a combination of surprise and mild embarrassment. Ivan got up and slapped me on the back after I’d been coughing for a few seconds, and I spent a few moments catching my breath.  
  
“Sorry! Sorry. I know I say things I don’t mean to every now and then. I didn’t think it’d be that bad though.”  
  
I waved off his concern. “It’s… fine. I’m fine. It was just… unexpected. ‘Cute’ isn’t really the first thing that comes to mind when most people see an eight-foot velociraptor staring at them.”  
  
He sat back down, grinning. “Well, I’m a bit different then. I’ve always thought dinosaurs were awesome either way, but a lot of them just look cute to me.”  
  
I shrugged. _“To each their own. That does explain why both of his forms were dinos, though. Speaking of which…”_ “So, which name did you pick? I know a bit about Digimon, so I might be able to tell you what you got.”  
  
He blinked. “Oh, so that’s how you got the dinosaur. That makes sense. Uh, I chose… what was it again… oh right, Terriermon!” I was very thankful I hadn’t taken my next bite of food yet, as I probably would have started choking again. Ivan didn’t seem to notice my surprise though, as he continued on. “I picked it because, well, I like dogs, and it was the only name I saw that really meant anything to me. I saw Labramon as well, but I picked Terriermon because Labramon sounded like it could also mean ‘Labratory Monster’ and I didn’t want to risk it.”  
  
I took a moment to respond once I was sure he was finished. “Well, unfortunately, Labramon would have been closer to being a dog than Terriermon is. Terriermon is… a bit odd. Closer to a bunny on two legs than to a dog, weirdly enough.”  
  
Ivan frowned for a moment. “Oh. Well that’s a bit of a bummer.” He sighed and shrugged. “Well, not like I had any way of knowing that ahead of time.” He finished off his plate around the same time I finished mine, so we got up and followed the guards. Oddly enough, we were going to the first room I’d been to again. I was a bit puzzled as to why I was going back again. After all, it couldn’t really stand up to Rookie level damage, let alone the Champion level stuff I could do now.  
  


* * *

  
_Mags sat with her father outside the restaurant they always went to when one of them wanted to apologise. She picked at her sandwich, not having much of an appetite after having caught him up on Kurata’s recent advances._  
  
_“Well.” He sighed and leaned back. “That’s… not good.”_  
  
_Mags stared at her father in disbelief. “Not good? That complete _madman_ has that kind of firepower behind him and all you can say is ‘not good’? How can you-”_  
  
_“Mags. Your hand.”_  
  
_Mags glanced down and quickly stuffed her burning hand into her jacket pocket, smothering the sea-green DNA Charge she’d accidentally summoned._  
  
_There was a moment of awkward silence._  
  
_“It’s been years since the last time you lost control like that.” He sighed. “Mags, it might not look like it but I _am_ taking this seriously. I’m just not panicking since all it’ll do is make things worse.” He took a sip of his tea._  
  
_“Isn’t there a way to stop this, though? He’s going to kill Merukimon in cold blood under the flag of truce, we can’t just sit around doing nothing!”_  
  
_He sighed. “Unfortunately, no.”_  
  
_“What? But- but you’re…”_  
  
_“I know I’m the commander of DATS, but it’s Kurata’s mission given directly from the Director. I can’t overrule his decisions, no matter how much I want to. Worse, he’s telling the Director what he wants to hear, so if I try to tell the Director what he’s been doing at best I’ll be ignored and written off as a jealous liar, and at worst they’ll approve of it and let him do it in the open rather than covertly.”_  
  
_Mags slumped. “So… what now?”_  
  
_“Well, the way I see it, we have two options here. Option one, you continue to pretend to work for Kurata and feed me information where you can…”_  
  
_Mags was already shaking her head. “No. I know it would probably be more useful, but… I can’t. I can’t help him anymore, it would destroy me. And that’s assuming he doesn’t somehow find out what I’ve been doing.”_  
  
_Homer nodded. “Alright then. The other option is that you don’t go back to him, and instead come with me to the Sacred City so we can warn as many Digimon as we can to gather in a safe place.”_  
  
_Mags smiled for the first time that day. “Yeah. I prefer that option.”_  
  
_He chuckled and stood to leave. “I thought you might. Come on, we’ll need to move fast if we want to use the Digital Dive before Kurata gets back. Oh, and one last thing…” He held out his hand to her. In it was a sea-green Digivice. “I know you’ve been waiting quite a while to see him again.”_  
  
_She took it, tears forming in her eyes. “Betamon?”_  
  
_A raspy voice issued from the device. “Mags?”_  
  
_She hugged it to herself for a few long moments._  
  
_“Just a little longer and we can have a proper reunion. I made sure that the first day’s rations were your favourite seafood.”_  
  
_She gave her father a grateful smile and slipped the device into her handbag. “Right. Let’s get moving, then.”_


	9. We are the Champions

We quickly made our way to the first gym I’d been to. It was a bit confusing, but my decision to wait for an explanation turned out to be the right one. We were greeted just inside the door by one of the guards, who directed Ivan over to the row of cubicles I’d been to on my first trip here, before leading me over to the connected room Kouki had been in on day one. And was currently in, judging by the flapping sounds.  
  
As I stepped through the doorway, I was greeted by a burst of wind. With my weight, balance and grip I was fine, but the guard with me had to grab the door in order to not fall over.  
  
_“BioThunderbirmon. I think? No, that was the Japanese version. This would be-“_  
  
“Stupid BioThunderbirdmon! Of all the Digimon I could’ve turned into, why did it have to be the one that doesn’t even have freaking _arms!_”  
  
Appearing just as his counterpart from the show I remembered did, Kouki as BioThunderbirdmon was currently trying, and apparently failing, to get himself airborne. He only noticed our entrance when the guard gave a sharp whistle to catch his attention.  
  
“What now?” Huh. Turns out Kouki can actually be pretty intimidating when he’s pissed off and glaring. It probably helps that he’s not a waist-high pipsqueak with a funny voice anymore.  
  
The guard took a moment to centre himself before talking. “I’m going to have to ask you to put flying on hold for a while so Jack can get his video lesson without having the computer blown across the room.”  
  
Kouki kept up the death-glare for a few more seconds before he deflated and sighed. “Fine, fine. I’ll give walking another try then.” He turned to me. “Good luck with this. Hope you get something more useful than I did.”  
  
“Thanks. Hope you get the hang of moving around sometime soon.” He nodded and gave me an odd look before he walked slowly to the next room over and, from the sounds he made, started pacing.  
  
Meanwhile, I made my way to the surprisingly sturdy desk terminal that was quickly being set back up from where Kouki’s attempts at flight had thrown it. Once it was set up, the guards left me to it as Kurata’s pre-recorded voice came out of the speakers.  
  
“Congratulations Jack, you’ve done wonderfully so far. Keep up the good work!” It was all I could do not to shudder at the praise. “Now, you seem to know a lot about Digimon, so I’m pretty sure you know about the level system to some degree. It sort of breaks down a bit at the higher end, but thankfully, you don’t need to worry about that just yet. What you do need to know is that, based on the readings I’ve got from you so far, you’ll have no problems reaching Champion level today. It’s basically the same as Rookie level, only more so. Though, one point of note: Digivolving requires you to feed a DNA Charge into a Digivice, so you’re going to need to be human in between stages.” Damn. I’d sort of expected that, but it was still annoying. ”Shouldn’t be a major issue, anyhow.”  
  
“Now, today’s sessions, for you, won’t involve any actual attacks just yet. You may have noticed that we don’t really have anywhere that can stand up to you for extended periods as-is, let alone at Champion level. Instead, this will simply be to figure out what exactly your Champion level will be, and getting used to it so there aren’t any nasty surprises down the road. For example, you wouldn’t want to be about to start an operation and only then find out that your Champion level form can’t breathe outside of water. The main reason it’s happening here is because this is the biggest space we have, and if it turns out to still be too small, well, better to lose the warehouse and have you mildly injured than to lose most of the facility and possibly crush you when it collapses.”  
  
I took a few seconds after he signed off with a cheery “Good luck!” to try to stop glaring metaphorical holes in whatever I looked at. I moved away from the computer, well away from the walls, and sat down before releasing the Guilmon form the same way I had last night.  
  
_“The same as Rookie level, but more, huh?” _I closed my eyes and remembered-  
  
_-a crying child’s voice-_  
  
_-PAIN-_  
  
_-it wasn’t a recording-_  


[Error 403: Forbidden: Ultimate-level BioHybrid DNA Charge]

[Allowing unrestricted variant: Champion-level BioHybrid DNA Charge]

The BioHybrid DNA Charge was stronger than ever, a burning ball of purple hatred that danced around my hand, occasionally flickering up halfway to my elbow. Which made sense, considering that it was apparently an entire level higher than it should be, barely restrained. I brought it over to the Digivice. “BioHybrid DNA Charge.”

It was over surprisingly quickly, given how long the animations the show used were. I can’t say I was surprised by the result.

**“BioGrowlmon!”**

* * *

  
_Ivan came to while being carried by someone else. His body felt… off, and everything seemed bigger._  
  
_It all came back to him in a rush and he jerked himself free of the arms carrying him, only to land face-first on the floor when his body didn’t respond how he thought it would._  
  
_He took a moment to feel out his new body before he tried moving again, and after he didn’t move he heard one of the guards ask “Uhhh… are you alright there?”_  
  
_Deciding he had a good enough handle on his new body to try, he gave the guard a thumbs-up. They sighed in relief. “Well, uh, do you need any help there?”_  
  
_He took a moment to decide, and responded with a thumbs-down. “Alright then. We’ll be just over here if you need anything. There’s a mirrored cubicle we were bringing you to just in front of you if you want a better look at yourself.”_  
  
_Flipping his thumb back up, he waited for the footsteps to recede before trying to move again._  
  
_“Okay, let’s see. Those are arms, those are legs… so these big things are… wait, what?”_  
  


* * *

  
I looked myself over in the one-way mirror that hid Kurata’s observation room. The differences between a normal Digimon and my BioHybrid version were both more and less obvious this time. I had the normal body type for a Growlmon, rather than the slimmer version I’d had as BioGuilmon. But I also had the ‘BioHybrid standard additions’ for Champion level: a weird cylinder coming out of the back of my head, and a set of superfluous tubes that seemed to do nothing but make me look odd and add an extra connection point between my biceps and my torso. I mused that I might also have the palette-swapped head, but since it seemed to palette-swap to red, I couldn’t see any real difference.  
  
As I moved around a bit to see if they would restrict me in a way I’d need to keep in mind, I noticed the yellow Digicode on my arms. I couldn’t seem to remember what it meant, which was annoying, especially since looking it up was effectively impossible here. I thought about it for a moment, absently noting the presence of some weird small grey addition to my tail, and realised that I could probably compare it with my sword’s Digicode from last night, if I could figure out how to get it to show up again.  
  
I was somehow aware that my sword’s Digicode spelled out ‘Crimson’, which helped, but it was a Rookie-level attack. I considered going back to Guilmon to see it, but a thought struck me. _“I… I still had the sword on my way back to my room. But I was human for a while… did I keep the sword while I was human and just not notice?”_  
  
It wasn't terribly surprising, considering how completely out of it I was last night. Of course, that just raised more questions. After all, if I could keep the sword when I was human, was there any reason I couldn't _summon_ it while human? Or at Champion level, for that matter? Only one way to find out.  
  
**“Kurogane Maru”**  


[Sword has insufficient data for current level. Repurposing harvested data.]

I felt an odd hollowness as some of my data was reformatted. It only lasted a moment, and I shivered as my sword appeared again, resized to still fit comfortably in my hand.

I focused for a moment, and it lit up with its name, Crimson. I thought out loud as I compared it to my arms.

“Let’s see… C doesn't show up, but the rest… I think that one’s an A… so I've got -I-I-A- MONS--R. That’s… oh for…” I planted my face in the hand not currently holding a sword and sighed. “’Digital Monster’. Of course.” I eyed the sword. “Still, that tangent wasn’t a _complete_ waste of time. Though I hope it can shrink again, since I can't imagine I'd be able to carry a sword this size around as a human.”

I went to go pace back and forth a bit, to see how different moving around in this body was from moving around as Guilmon. I spent a few minutes at it, while the guards who had been there the entire time slowly lost the smell of fear.

I didn’t get very far with that before my train of thought was derailed by an odd, modulated scream, as though someone was yelling through a voice-changer set to ‘robot’.

_“Ah. Nanami’s probably woken up then. Odd though, we seemed to be going for a group that’d mimic the Tamers, but that doesn’t sound anything like Renamon.”_

* * *

  
_Ivan had mostly got the hang of moving around. If he held his now-gigantic ears out to the sides, they acted much like a tightrope-walker’s pole and pushed his centre of gravity down far enough that it was almost hard to fall over. The downside was that that was exhausting, so most of the time he simply let them hang and drag on the ground, where they acted as a rough equivalent to training wheels on a bike._  
  
_Of course, dealing with relatively stubby limbs tends to make one less coordinated, so when he was surprised by Nanami’s scream, he tripped over his ears and landed on his face. Fortunately he was alright, since he was only a little over waist-high and didn’t have far to fall._  
  
_Getting back up, he approached Nanami’s cubicle, which now had robotic whimpering coming from it. “Nanami? Are you alright in there?”_  
  
_“Ivan? Is that you? You sound… different.” Nanami’s voice had a definitely robotic sound to it now._  
  
_He stopped right outside the cubicle. “You do too. You sound… robot-y. I hadn’t noticed anything weird with my voice though. How is it?”_  
  
_There were a few mumbles before she responded. “Um… higher. It’s different besides that, but I can’t remember the words for it right now.”_  
  
_There were a few moments of silence as they thought. “Do you mind if I come in?”_  
  
_There were some clanking sounds as Nanami took a moment to respond, and when she did her voice was halting, hesitant. “I- I- Um… Al- alright… I guess.”_  
  
_Ivan took that to mean he should come in slowly. He’d heard that tone before, and the people using it tended not to like loud noises or grand gestures. When he entered…_  
  
_Nanami was facing away from him. But there were mirrors in these cubicles, and in the back he could see both of their reflections._  
  
_Like Jack had said, Terriermon was based more on rabbits than dogs, though really it wasn’t very close to either, and BioTerriermon was the same. He’d got a picture during the introduction the Professor had given him, and it was mostly the same as how he looked now._  
  
_His limbs were a little longer proportionally than the one in the picture had, and he was leaner, but other than that and what Ivan suspected was a pretty big height difference, that was about it._  
  
_Nanami, though…_  
  
_The first thing that came to mind was that he was pretty sure she’d actually gotten bigger, if not by much. And mainly only because of the horns. She looked… roughly like what would happen if you took a beetle, made it stand on its hind legs, made it a robot, made it slightly more square-ish and humanoid, and then turned its horns into a taser. Of course, he’d never say that out loud._  
  
_Nanami sighed, looking away. “Thanks for the summary, Ivan. You really need to work on not speaking your mind.”_  
  
_He winced. “Sorry. I wouldn't have thought it'd be bad enough to make you scream though. It can't have just been surprise, since you’d have needed a picture to turn into it, right?”_  
  
_Nanami shook her head, an odd motion since he hadn't thought it was separate enough from her body for that. “I saw the picture, but… there’s a big difference between seeing it on a screen and seeing it in a mirror.” She looked him over. “It's probably not as bad for you either. You still seem more or less like a mammal. You've still got skin and hair and… all that stuff. I've got… metal. And circuits. And it's just so…”_  
  
_She trailed off. For a moment, there was a sympathetic silence._  
  
_Then a guard knocked on the side of the cubicle. “Everything all right in there?”_  
  
_Ivan looked at Nanami. For a moment, what he could see of her expression wavered, then firmed. She let out a quiet burst of white noise, which he guessed was the robot equivalent of a deep breath._  
  
_“Not yet. But it will be.”_  
  


* * *

  
Once the guards were satisfied that I really was perfectly capable of moving around as BioGrowlmon, one of them waved me over. I dropped out of my handstand and cocked my head.  
  
“There's not really much more you can do as a Champion in this facility. I _would_ ask you to go back to Rookie so you can do more moving target practise-“ He paled slightly and the scent of fear shot up. I knew I was big, but was my scowl _really_ that bad? “-_BUT_, but fortunately, it's almost time for lunch so you can just do whatever for the next few minutes. Um, you're still going to have to turn back for the actual meal, though. Even if you’d fit in the cafeteria, I don't think we've got enough food.”  
  
He walked off at my answering nod, and he walked off, apparently fine. Though he then ruined the impression by collapsing in relief the moment he was out of my sight.  
  
I couldn't suppress a chuckle. “You know, I don't bite. I do have pretty good hearing, though.”  
  
I could only imagine his expression as, from the sounds he made, he bolted like a startled rabbit.  
  
“_So. What to do with a few minutes of free time… well. Why not check out the Design Suite?"_  


[Activating Digital Design Suite]

The not-voice was all the warning I got before everything went dark, and things were suddenly very odd.

* * *

  
_Kurata walked out of DATS headquarters grinding his teeth through a smile. It wasn't even a big deal, really, but having his plans put back a day with no warning was immensely frustrating. He'd wasted most of the day for no bigger reason than a calibration error._  
  
_He knew he shouldn't be mad at Thomas, don't shoot the messenger and all that, but it was incredibly hard to keep a calm face while he rattled off the fact that the Digital Dive was currently set up for two people and their Digimon, rather than the blank calibration it should have had just after being repaired._  
  
_Worse, it could only have been calibrated by somebody using it. But all of the current DATS operatives were accounted for in the room at the time, which meant that not only had he had been delayed, he'd been delayed by an unknown group. He really hated unknowns._  
  
_Hopefully the BioHybrids training would be able to take his mind off of things._


	10. Points of View

My first impression was that I was suddenly in two places at once. And, in a manner of speaking, I was. It's just that one of those places only existed in my head.  
  
On the outside, I was still BioGrowlmon, standing in the gym. On the inside, I was sitting in the starfield from when I was asleep, and I was human.  
  
I noticed that, in addition to what had been there last night, there was now a second screen. It appeared to be loading, and after a moment it cleared to show a mostly blank screen with a few icons in bars around the edges, similar to how I remembered Photoshop looked. Also similarly to Photoshop, I didn't have the slightest clue what most of them were for. Unlike Photoshop, unfortunately, the DDS didn't come with a manual, a forum of other helpful users to ask, or even tooltips to give me a description of what each button did. The only buttons I recognised were three in the top-left; New, Open, and Save. And even then, each of them came with a drop-down menu, though thankfully those involved actual text.  
  
I idly paced in the real world, both to make sure it didn't look like I'd decided to take a nap and to get more practise at using two bodies at once, while in my starfield I did my best to puzzle out what the different buttons did. Some I was able to more-or-less puzzle out without too much effort, like box-selecting, scaling, and zooming. Others escaped me entirely, since just being told that one button was filled with variations on things like ‘fillet’ or ‘chamfer’ or, more worryingly, ‘explode’, didn't do much to give me an explanation of what those things meant in this context.  
  
I had found the scripting tool – and, thankfully, some notes on how certain parts of the coding worked, since I was not looking forward to having to figure out a computer language by trial and error, or worse, by asking Kurata for help – when I noticed a guard trying to get my attention in the real world.  
  
He didn't seem to notice I was paying attention, since he was muttering to himself while waving at me. “Goddamn lizard with more firepower than a tank and he's apparently gone deaf or something.”  
  
I stopped pacing and turned to face him, making sure to make my smile extra wide. Being distracted immediately after finding the single part of the DDS I'd likely be best at using was somewhat annoying. “Sorry. This _goddamn lizard_ was a bit distracted by something the Professor decided to put directly into my brain. I can assure you, my hearing is even better than it was last night.”  
  
“I – er – uh –“ The suddenly paler guard was saved from having to respond to that by an alert from the radio on his hip. He held up a finger as he took the call.  
  
“Yes sir?”  
  
_“Sergeant, one of the specimens has breached containment in Area 7, Level 46. It's probably not going to make it as far as you, but you need to help lock down any escape routes it could use regardless. That's a priority order.”_  
  
“Yes sir. Right away sir.”  
  
He put his radio back and was silent for a few seconds, clearly thinking hard, before sighing and turning back to me.  
  
“Everyone on the upper levels is going to be involved in that, which means no-one’s going to be available to escort you and the other three around. You know your way around?”  
  
“I know my way to the cafeteria and back.”  
  
“Good enough. You mind making sure the other three don't get lost?”  
  
I shrugged. “Sure. No problem.”  
  
He sighed with relief. “Great. That’ll help free up some manpower. And, uh, I was originally trying to let you know that it's lunchtime now, by the way.”  
  
I nodded. “I’ll deal with that. Anything else?”  
  
He was already moving to the door and talking on his radio again when he shook his head.  
  
_“So, step one, go back down to Guilmon. Because I somehow doubt Growlmon is going to fit through most of the doors here, let alone the halls.” _I focused on the same feeling from before and gathered it up. _“Maybe if I only let _some_ of it out…”_  
  
Unfortunately, it was like trying to fray a rope under tension with the goal of getting a smaller rope. Instead, it just snapped, leaving me human and scowling at the ceiling. Thankfully, the now-massive Kurogane Maru hadn’t landed on me. I returned it to the starfield in much the same way I degenerated; by focusing on it and then mentally releasing it. It dissolved into yellow data and flew back into my Digivice.  
  
After Digivolving to Guilmon again, I walked over to the room where Kouki was, apparently, back to flying practise. I also made a mental note to practise only degenerating partway. Being able to revert to Guilmon at will seemed much more convenient than landing on my paralysed human rear every time, especially since the DDS had closed when I reverted. It would probably also let me do the same with the Kurogane Maru, since they worked the same way.  
  
An idea struck me, but it’d have to wait until after lunch. _“If I can keep the Kurogane Maru while I’m human, I wonder if I can _summon_ it then, too.”_  
  


* * *

  
_“Hey, Kouki! Lunchtime!”_  
  
_He heard Jack's voice from the doors and repressed a shudder. Last night’s video had thoroughly put paid to any ideas of not being terrified of him. He had to hide it though. Bad enough that Kurata seemed disappointed in him for not immediately killing the cat – Mikemon, her name was Mikemon - in cold blood the way Jack had with his opponent, Kouki wasn't sure what the professor would do if he found out Kouki was having second thoughts. He'd had nightmares of being chained up opposite Jack in that little cell, of having those slit eyes turned on him, of those burning claws-_  
  
_“Earth to Kouki! You in there?”_  
  
_He jolted out of the downward spiral his thoughts had taken, back in the moment for now. “Hm? Oh. Right. Lunch. Give me a sec here…”_  
  
_Reluctantly, he released his hold on the DNA Charge and degenerated back into plain old Kouki. He immediately noticed something odd._  
  
_“So… where’s the guard?”_  
  
_Jack had had a little smile on his face since he entered the room, but it looked off. Maybe it didn't reach his eyes?_  
  
_“They’re dealing with a containment breach in the lower levels. Don't worry, I'll be more than capable of making sure you don't get lost.”_  
  
_Kouki nodded absently and followed along, his thoughts racing. _“They trust Jack enough to let him stand in for the guards. He knows way too much about Digimon. He can get away with stuff no-one else is allowed to. He agrees with pretty much everything Kurata says. The only thing he disagrees with Kurata about is the paraplegia, and that wouldn't be hard to fake. All I've got to go on there is Jack's word and a wheelchair.”  
  
_Kouki did his best to stay calm as he reached the only conclusion he could._  
  
“Jack was one of Kurata’s men from the start. He's here to keep the rest of us in line. The whole friendliness thing is probably an act to get us to be more likely to buy into the ‘Digimon are evil’ stuff.”  
  
“I can't let him know about any of this. Ever.”  
  


* * *

  
I’d started up the DDS again immediately when I could, though I just left it in the background for now. That starfield was surprisingly soothing to have, and after last night I needed all the help on that front I could get.  
  
Kouki was a bit nervous around me, though all things considered I wasn't surprised. He'd probably heard about what I managed last night, and being an effectively-baseline human anywhere near me was probably at least a bit worrying after seeing that.  
  
We made our way into the first room, where Ivan and Nanami were currently getting used to their new bodies. They were doing stretches and occasionally impromptu gymnastics in the middle of the room. They were also facing away from us, and didn't seem to hear me when I called that it was lunchtime.  
  
I moved a bit closer and tried again. “Hey! Lunchtime!”  
  
“Aah! **Stun Shocker!**”  
  
I blinked. The bolt of lightning that rammed into my face had had around as much effect as a half-hearted slap.  
  
There was silence for a moment as what had just happened sunk in. I could see that everyone else would probably start shouting the moment they got a chance, so I stepped in first.  
  
“I appreciate you holding back at the last moment, Nanami. I barely felt that. Though it's probably not the best way to introduce yourself to new teammates.” A moment of awkward silence. “I’m Jack, by the way.”  
  
More awkward silence. After a few seconds, Kouki coughed. “Lunchtime?”  
  
“Hm? Oh, right. It's lunchtime, so go back to human and we can all head to the cafeteria. There are no guards around at the moment because they're all dealing with a minor emergency, but it's not a big deal.”  
  
I walked past them to the door, and when I only heard two sets of footsteps I turned to see that Nanami was just staring at me. “What? Is there a problem?”  
  
She opened her mouth as if to reply, but then closed it again after a moment and reverted to human without a sound. Instead of the ridiculous outfit she had in the show, she was wearing a much more practical black and white jumpsuit similar in design to the grey one I was wearing on my human body.  
  
I nodded at the group. “Let’s go have lunch, then.”  
  


* * *

  
“You’re the Mascot, aren’t you?”  
  
_Nanami desperately wanted to ask him. It was so obviously just like being in one of the Mahou Shoujo shows she loved to watch! Sure she was the only girl on the team, but everything else fit. There was the not-human one who knew way more than the rest, the goofy funny guy, the passionate fighter, and the main character! Brought together by a mysterious benefactor, they would use transformation sequences to gain magical powers – because how could they be anything but magical, even if her new form was a bit lacklustre? – and use them to fend off monsters trying to invade their world._  
  
_She wanted to ask. She needed to know. But there was a little voice in the back of her head._  
  
“What if they say no?”  
  
_She didn’t want to risk that. Even if she believed in her new calling as the main character of a Mahou Shoujo group, the others might have different ideas. Kouki, for example, would probably see it as a shounen group that was all about punching things so they exploded or something._  
  
_So instead, she asked the first question that came into her head when they all sat down together. “Why are you eating a stacked plate of nothing but pastries?”_  
  
_He looked up and swallowed his current mouthful, blinking his adorable round eyes. “Hm? Oh, right. Well, I figure if it all turns into data anyway, it doesn’t really matter _what_ I eat so much as _how much_ I eat as far as hunger goes, so I’ve got a load of pastries and stuff since they taste good.” He shifted some of his food around, exposing a few lonely rice balls at the bottom. “And it’s not all pastries. I’ve got some other stuff in here so I don’t end up getting tired of eating just one kind of food.”_  
  
_As he went back to his meal, Nanami smiled to herself. Yeah, he was definitely the Mascot._  
  
_That was probably also why he was able to shrug off what she felt sure was her strongest attack like it was nothing earlier as well. Nothing to worry about. He probably had plenty of age and experience more than her. Mascots tended to have been around at least since the teams they were on had formed, if they didn’t form the teams themselves._  
  
_So why did it make her nervous?_  
  


* * *

  
Comfort food. _All_ of the comfort food, plus a little diversity so I wouldn’t hit diminishing returns. After what happened last night, I needed all I could get, and the general nervousness I could smell from the other three didn’t help.  
  
Compared to previous meals, lunch was oddly quiet. Aside from a few questions here and there, it was almost silent. It was almost eerie considering that there were twice as many people as any of the other meals, but that was probably the reason why it was quiet in the first place.  
  
I was fine with it, or at least more fine than I would have been with an actual conversation. I was still having to keep a little effort into making my expression something other than ‘dead-eyed stare that pierces your soul’, and I wasn’t sure I could have kept it out of my voice for long.  
  
Before long, everyone’s plates were empty – the others their first, mine my fifth – and after a few moments of general awkwardness I led the way back to the gym since the guards still weren’t done with their containment breach.  
  
We arrived, and Ivan oddly enough looked to me for guidance. “So what do we do now?” I cocked my head and he clarified. ”The guards said we’d probably be doing something different later, but they’re not here to tell us. I figured you could tell us what they had you do on your first day and we could do that.”  
  
I blinked, wondering why that surprised me for a moment. “Okay. Uh, my first day was mostly just getting used to having a new body and moving around in it. I didn’t start with attacks until Day 2. So, I’d say just spend more time in your new bodies moving around and stuff. Maybe play tag? I know at one point I had guards throw dodgeballs at me while I ran the obstacle course over there, but you can’t really do that properly with just one other person, so-”  
  
Thankfully, Ivan cut off my progressively more self-conscious rambling. “Okay. Get used to the new bodies and moving around in them. We can do that.”  
  
Mentally sighing in relief that my façade didn’t seem to have cracked and I hadn’t made much of a fool of myself, I turned to Kouki. “Are you going to keep trying to get airborne, or try something else?”  
  
He took a second to answer. “Flying. Trust me, trying to walk around like that is _really_ annoying. How about you?”  
  
I shrugged. “I’ll be doing a couple of things I wanted to get a better handle on. I’ve got no problems moving around, my Champion level form is basically this but bigger.”  
  
With that, we all went our separate ways, back to where we were before lunch. I had a few things to work on. Step one: the DDS, devolving to just BioGuilmon, and probably multitasking.  
  
I got to work.  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata was in a foul mood. His plans seemed to be running into one inconvenience after another. First, the Gizumon hadn’t been able to kill SaberLeomon on its own. Not a big deal by itself, and perfectly understandable given that it was a Rookie attacking a Mega, but annoying nonetheless. Then he’d been distracted on the way to his meeting with the Director thanks to Jack meddling with his Digital Hazard and as a result he’d been late and his presentation had been rushed. Again, understandable, since he didn’t seem to know why it was such a Bad Thing, and he was successful in the end regardless, but again, annoying._  
  
_Just now, thanks to what was probably Homer’s work, he’d been told that if he wanted to go to the Digital World at all - _on his own expedition! -_ he needed to either have a Digimon partner and leave his guards behind, or wait a day for the Digital Dive to be reconfigured to let templates other than ‘two humans and their partner Digimon’ through with any degree of accuracy. If anyone tried to go through it without meeting that template, they probably wouldn’t be hurt by the Dive itself, but they’d be effectively scattered randomly over the Digital World where there were plenty of things that would _love_ to do the job in its place._  
  
_And to top it all off, the containment cells where he’d been keeping the very few Digimon he actually wanted to keep alive had broken down and the entire base was in lockdown. Which meant he couldn’t get in to his main computer to actually _do_ anything until that was resolved. He had his tablet with him, but that was limited in what it could actually do. For example, one of its main features was…_  
  
_“Oh good, a video call.” Speak of the devil. He took the call and a pale, visibly exhausted guard showed up on the screen. “Sir. The situation has been dealt with. Would you like a full report now?”_  
  
_Kurata deliberated for a moment. “No. Just a summary will do for now. Send the full report to my computer.”_  
  
_“Yes sir.” He visibly collected himself. “Of the four subjects currently in captivity, three escaped. We were able to subdue one and recapture it, but the other two necessitated deletion to prevent them from escaping. We took fourteen casualties, only one of which was fatal. No Gizumon units were lost, nothing of consequence outside of the containment area was damaged, and the BioHybrids were not involved in the incident.”_  
  
_Kurata massaged the bridge of his nose. “Well, it could have been worse.” A thought struck him and he frowned. “Have you determined what the _cause_ of the breach was yet?”_  
  
_Odd. He seemed to somehow pale even further at that. “Well sir, we don’t have anything conclusive as of yet, but from the preliminary investigation, the primary cause seems to have been, well… sabotage.”_  
  
_Kurata’s expensive tablet shattered on the bulletproof windows of his car._


	11. Two steps forward, One step back

_“Well,”_ I thought as I lay on the floor, human again and breathing heavily, _“I can now say from personal experience that repeatedly evolving and devolving is ridiculously exhausting.”_  
  
It hadn’t been so bad at first, but it seemed to get worse faster the more tired I was going into it. I’d made some progress into only reverting partway, managing to extend the time taken to devolve, but I wasn’t quite there yet.  
  
“Maybe figuring it out with the sword first would help?” I mused, picturing the Kurogane Maru growing to fit BioGrowlmon. I smiled slightly, as the thought sparked an idea. “Well, if I can _keep_ it when I’m human, maybe I can… **Kurogane Maru!**”  
  
I wasn’t seriously expecting it to work, which made it all the more surprising when a foot-long copy of the sword, more of a long dagger really, appeared in my outstretched hand.  
  
“Huh.” I sat up against the nearest wall to briefly inspect it without risking dropping it on my face, but it seemed to be identical except for the size.  
  
Idly, I noticed that my right arm seemed to be lightly burned, probably from using Hazard Claw last night. It probably wasn’t a big deal, since it didn’t hurt, but I resolved to try not to use it again if I didn’t have to. The Hazard wasn’t something to play around with on a whim after all, even if it probably couldn’t do much at Rookie level.  
  
Then the blade sparked another idea.  
  
_“If I can make it grow without having to be a Digimon while I summon it, it’d make this practice much easier.”_ I thought about how to do it for a moment, before mentally shrugging and summoning a Rookie-level BioHybrid DNA Charge. _“The DNA Charge is basically magic. Can’t really hurt to try, right?”_  
  
As it turned out, it could, though not for the reason I’d expected. Channelling the DNA Charge into it was easy; I was holding it in the hand my DNA Charge came from so siphoning off a little for the sword wasn’t a problem. Unfortunately, I apparently needed to keep a better grip on it while I did that, because the sword seemed to expand both forwards and backwards, leaving me holding the middle of the blade while the pommel sucker-punched me in the gut.  
  
After I finished having a coughing fit, I noticed that, despite having ended up holding it tightly on the blade, I wasn’t getting cut. _“Probably the same reason Marcus could punch a spear-point and not even break his skin, just on a smaller scale.”_ To test that, I held the sword by the grip and gingerly tested my left little finger on the edge. As expected, blood started to well out of a small cut. _“On the one hand, the pain is annoying. On the other hand, it’ll probably be gone after I Digivolve again, and I now have confirmation that I can use DNA Charge as armour.”_  
  
Unfortunately, while I made some progress, the rest of the session before dinner wasn’t as productive as I’d have liked.  


* * *

  
Whatever minor emergency had happened during lunch seemed to have been resolved in the meantime, since the guards were around again to escort us back to dinner. Apparently they approved of what we’d been doing in the meantime, or at least if they didn’t approve I didn’t hear a word of it.  
  
Dinner was less awkwardly silent than lunch, though that wasn’t saying much. Nanami had opened up a bit to the rest of us, and while her main source of actual conversation was Ivan, Kouki and I contributed bits and pieces here and there. I may not have cared at all about the subject matter – not surprising, given that the conversation was being driven by a teenage girl – but just having some friendly interactions helped my mood a bit, and by the end of the meal I got the feeling my smile actually reached my eyes again, even if it wasn’t as big as it had been yesterday.  
  
Of course, then I had target practice again, so it didn’t stay that way. But it was nice while it lasted.  


* * *

  
_“STAY STILL YOU FLIGHTY BASTARDS! WILD SCRATCH! GUIL SHOT!”_  
  
_Kurata relaxed, watching Jack fight another swarm of Gizumon BASICs. Watching his most loyal BioHybrid fling around high-speed explosions and fire at his creations was surprisingly cathartic, especially since he knew that both Jack and the BASICs were learning from the exchanges to become better assailants and observers respectively.  
  
“STOP MOVING AND DIE ALREADY! ROCK BREAKER! PYRO SPHERE!”_  
  
_Already, they’d had to call two breaks to resurface the room, and the second time they’d had to bring in four more Gizumon because Jack had destroyed half of the first batch. It looked like they were going to have to finish up for the night soon, based on the exposed concrete patches on the walls, the steadily rising temperature of the adjoined rooms, and the slowly dwindling numbers of Gizumon remaining unbroken._  
  
_“KUROGANE MARU!”_  
  
_With a shriek of tortured metal, the last Gizumon in the room was skewered by the thrown sword and burst into data, leaving the blade embedded six inches deep in the reinforced concrete. It was retrieved moments later when Jack tore it out of the wall and whirled around, slit pupils darting back and forth for a moment before something seemed to register with him and he relaxed, letting the sword dissipate into yellow motes of data._  
  
“He doesn’t even seem very tired.” _Kurata mused. _“If he needed to, he could probably do all that again a few times over before he needed to rest.” _He dismissed Jack to bed with a metaphorical pat on the back – he’d have given him a real one, but from the red-hot metal spattered over him, that seemed like a bad idea right now – and leaned back in the deserted observation room to fine-tune the data his Gizumon had gathered, smiling broadly. After all, if Jack had trouble finding and hitting them in this confined space even after hours of trying and with all his advantages, the wild Digimon wouldn’t stand a chance. Not to mention that any Digimon that relied on speed was likely going to be out of luck if they found themselves facing Jack. The only sour note to the whole thing was that he still wasn’t sure of the cause of Jack’s apparent revulsion towards the Gizumon, but they could learn to work around that in time._  
  
_Kurata had worked through much harder obstacles in the past after all._  


* * *

  
I looked, bemused, at the handle to my bedroom door. Or more accurately, at what was left of it. The twisted, drooping snarl of metal had visible imprints in it where my claws had been, and looking myself over, it wasn’t hard to guess what the cause was.  
  
_“I _did_ just spend a few hours in what was effectively a big furnace.”_ I thought, shouldering the door open carefully so I didn’t set it on fire. The latch was no issue, as it seemed to have gotten stuck open when I half-melted the handle. “_Oops._”  
  
Thankfully, I’d left the bathroom door open, so after kicking it closed behind me and quickly jabbing the switch for the fan, all I had to do to cool off was take a quick shower. I was immediately very grateful that I’d turned the fan on, because for the first minute or so more water went through it as steam than managed to reach the drain.  
  
After a few minutes, the floor of the shower was sprinkled with little shards of cooling metal and I was back down to a temperature that, while warm, wouldn’t set me on fire if I turned back. After I dried off, I lay in bed for a minute or two, thinking.  
  
_“There’s no reason I can’t. And I _would_ like to be capable of this as soon as I can.”_  
  
My mind made up, I reverted to human. I probably didn’t need to, but I wasn’t sure yet whether I was at all capable of having a Kurogane Maru sized for a human as a BioGuilmon, while I knew I could get the Rookie-sized sword while I was human.  
  
Thus began the tiring, repetitive process of summoning the sword, growing it to Rookie level, and trying to catch it at human level on the way back down. Though after a few repetitions I figured out I could just keep the DNA Charge going and summon it right to Rookie level, which cut out the first step.  
  
_“In a way it’s a bit like counting sheep…”_  


* * *

  
_-a shattered, burning restaurant, bodies everywhere-_  
  
_ -a scream cut short-_  
  
_ -a city in ruins, monsters fighting a few streets away-_  
  
_ -a crying child’s plea for help-_  
  
_ -PAIN-_  
  
_ -“do some work for me”-_  
  
_ -RAGE-_  
  
_ -“Digital Hazard”-_  
  
_ -“How else was I to lure in soft-hearted fools?”-_  
  
_ -DESPAIR-_

* * *

  
I didn’t wake up screaming, or suddenly jolt upright like you see on TV. One moment I was in the throes of a horrific nightmare, and the next I was lying in bed, staring at the wall with tears in my eyes and torn, tangled sheets wrapped around me.  
  
After a moment, I registered that I was holding something. I tore my arm out of its cocoon – I was going to need new blankets anyway – and was immediately very relieved that I hadn’t managed to stab myself with the dagger-sized Kurogane Maru while I was asleep.  
  
_“Well, I guess that explains the state of the sheets.”_ Something was niggling at me though. It was like when I’d first woke up in Japan, something was wrong and it was probably staring me right in the face.  
  
Scowling in frustration, I tore my way out of the rest of the sheets and summoned a DNA Charge so I could walk to the shower – and froze.  
  
_“The DNA Charge. I was using it to summon the sword at Rookie level. But it’s human-sized now.”_  
  
Cautiously, not wanting to get my hopes too high, I grew the sword to Rookie level again, and then let go- _there!_  
  
Looking at the dagger now in my hand, I couldn’t help but smile. _“Now all I need to do is figure out how to go up a level when I’m already a Digimon and I’ll never need to be human again.”_  
  
Considering what had just happened when I went to sleep human, that seemed like a perfectly reasonable goal to aim for.  


* * *

  
I was up much earlier than normal that morning. I didn’t particularly _want_ to be, especially since when I had free time my morning was everyone else’s afternoon at best, but there was no way I’d be getting back to sleep again after that. I lounged around for a while as a compromise, and since there was precious little else I could do here for now… I thought.  
  
I hadn’t really _thought_ about my situation before now. Partially because I was always keeping busy with other things, partially because when I wasn’t I tended to be too exhausted to want to do anything but sleep, and partially because I just didn’t really want to think about it. It was a shitty situation at best, after all.  
  
Still, I had to do it at some point. Probably best to do it before reality beat my face in. First; either I would somehow escape Kurata, be forced to kill innocent Digimon, or die myself. Those were really my only options. I hoped that I’d have a chance to do the first, but I probably wouldn’t. That left killing innocents or being killed, whether by the innocents I was trying to save or by Kurata didn’t really matter. I… I wasn’t sure what I would choose yet. Both were horrible fates, and I’d make sure to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to escape from here on out, but if it came down to it… Well, I hadn’t known whether I’d help or abandon the kid until I’d tried, and this was similar. Just worse in every way.  
  
I forced my thoughts out of that pit. I had no way to know what I’d choose in the moment until it came – unlike most moral choices, I didn’t even know which one I’d like to say I’d choose - so I’d just not think about it until then. Instead I would maximise my chances to escape.  
  
Things that would help to escape. Getting more powerful certainly wouldn’t hurt, though I didn’t have many options outside of loading Gizumon BASICs during target practise – somehow I doubted Kurata would be willing to sacrifice anything meaningful for a minor increase in my strength. Getting more adept with this set of bodies, though I was going to do that anyway.  
  
I grimaced. Getting into Kurata’s good graces would probably mean he’d keep less of a close eye on me, which could help, but in all likelihood it would require killing, which put it firmly into the “don’t think about it” category.  
  
Maybe ‘accidentally’ killing a few Gizumon while I was out, if I did decide that way? I wouldn’t be likely to be able to push it too far, but when I decided to go for it it could make a difference.  
  
I caught sight of my left arm as I shifted around and groaned. _The Digivice. _Kurata had said it sent him all kinds of information. What were the odds it’d send him its location as well? Running away wouldn’t work unless I found a place able to defend against the Gizumon or managed to disable that function. Maybe a virus? I considered for a moment and then shuddered. The Digivice, or rather, the Digivolution it was maintaining, was all that kept me from being effectively a useless cripple. I’d probably make a few viruses in the DDS as a contingency, but they’d be last-resort.  
  
And then there were the other BioHybrids. Kouki, Nanami, Ivan. BioThunderbirdmon, BioStegomon, and BioCoatlmon, if my memory served and if I hadn’t changed things by being here. Individually, probably not much of a threat. But working together? Especially with Gizumon backing them up? No. Not feasible. Though maybe… Kouki had seemed friendly enough at first. But after yesterday night – after killing a Digimon – he’d been much quieter. Granted at least part of that was probably because of how I’d been, but combined with what I knew he could go on to do…  
  
No. I couldn’t trust him enough to risk trying to get him to defect along with me. It was tempting – BioThunderbirdmon had ridiculous mobility compared to everything else Kurata had available, and with BioGuilmon on his back it could be a flying weapons platform – but there was too much of a chance that he’d turn on me. It was frustrating, but I couldn’t risk it.  
  
I Digivolved and started the DDS, intending to get started on some viruses, when an idle scratch at my chest reminded me of another potential avenue to power. I froze.  
  
_“It would certainly beat anything Kurata had access to.”_  
  
_“It would also tear reality to shreds.”_  
  
_“But I’d be free, and Kurata wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone.”_  
  
_“Yes, because I’d have killed them all already. It’s not worth it.”_  
  
_“But who’s to say I wouldn’t be in control? Not like anyone’s seen a BioMe-“_  
  
_“AND LET’S NOT FORGET YGGY AND THE ROYAL FUCKING KNIGHTS. Who turned up in the show _specifically_ because something tore a hole in reality.”_  
  
_“But I’ve already used-“_  
  
_“NO. That was a fucking Rookie-level attack. That’s not great, but it’s not about to release Armageddon by itself. I’ll be more careful once I get to Ultimate, when going Megiddo or Chaos is actually possible.”_  
  
I shuddered. I might use its power while it wasn’t a serious threat, but I wasn’t going to touch the bloody Hazard once it became one.  
  
Tired, irritated, and more than a little worried, I decided that if I was thinking about _that_ I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas and went to clean up. It may have been ridiculously early still, but I _definitely _wasn’t getting any sleep now, so I might as well go start putting my new goals into practise.  
  
Get stronger, look for escape opportunities, make a few viruses and see if I couldn’t figure out how to Digivolve without being human again. How hard could it be?  


* * *

  
A few minutes later, I opened the door and the dozing guard opposite the door almost had a heart attack as he jolted awake to the sight of an unexpected velociraptor.  
  
“Crazy lizard couldn’t wait fifteen minutes for the shift change? Thought he normally slept till noon, not half-five.” He muttered under his breath. He then immediately froze and paled, fear wafting off him like the smell of bacon reaching through an entire house in the morning as he remembered that I could probably have heard that from the other end of the corridor, let alone from two feet in front of him.  
  
I’m pretty sure I was glaring at him as well, which probably didn’t help. I was a bit too tired to care much, though. “Normally, I haven’t just had the worst nightmare of my life. Go ahead and clock off, I can find my way to the cafeteria just fine.” I frowned slightly. “They’ve got food this early, right?”  
  
He was trying to be subtle about the fact that he was edging away from me and failing miserably. “Uh, nothing fresh, but they’ve probably got a load of pre-made stuff left over from the night shift.”  
  
“Close enough.” I could practically - no, I could _literally_ smell the relief wash over him as I walked away from him. I didn’t particularly care, though. I was focused on something else.  
  
I was rarely awake this early, and most of the times when I was it was more accurate to say that I was awake that late, usually because I had some kind of deadline the next day. I was never very functional at this hour without help, and while I may have hated the taste, I couldn’t deny that coffee – which would almost certainly be present among the night shift’s leftovers – was effective at what it did.


	12. The bigger they are...

Freshly fuelled by coffee and pastries, I went to train. There were no guards around this early, so I just set myself up doing whatever physical exercises I happened to think of. I didn’t pay much attention to what I was actually doing though, and let myself move almost on autopilot - I was much more engaged mentally, poking around in the DDS and trying to figure out a way to Digivolve without being human. Unfortunately, trying to concentrate on just the latter left me quickly getting nowhere, so I ended up just hoping for inspiration on that front. There wasn’t a lot I could do about it until I had some ideas for where to start, after all.  
  
Throwing together some basic viruses and worms was ridiculously easy, though Kurata would likely have some kind of failsafe against them actually going off. Things like exponential fork-bombs and infinite loops weren’t terribly subtle options, but they took so little effort to make that I figured I might as well. Unfortunately, that was roughly where most of my simple options ended. I could set up a multitude of viruses, true, but I needed to know more about which bits of code did what in the system Kurata had created in order to have them do anything more sophisticated than taking up resources or corrupting random data. I shuddered at the thought. No, given that I was potentially a part of said data, that wasn’t an option yet.  
  
That was how I spent most of my morning – trawling through code fragments in the Gizumon directories and loading them one by one into the DDS to see what they did and how. As I went, I also noted a few potential weak spots and deficiencies here and there; for example, ripping the ‘arms’ out of the versions that had them seemed to be difficult and unintuitive but if you had some leverage it would be easier than trying to get through the armour normally and doing so would take most of the ‘brain’ with them. Similarly, the beam emitter/camera units that looked like eyes were only barely weaker than the surrounding armour, but they were still weaker.  
  
Annoyingly, there were parts of code that referenced other directories that I didn’t have access to – the actually weapon-related parts of the weapons systems were defined somewhere else, and wherever the data I’d collected so far was stored didn’t seem to be somewhere I could access directly either.  
  
I got what I thought was about a third of the way through the code I had access to before I got called for lunch.  
  


* * *

  
_The day had barely started, and already Kouki was almost desperate for it to be over. Ivan and Nanami were nice enough, even if Ivan seemed a bit slow sometimes and Nanami had her head so far in the clouds she was probably at risk of being hit by a plane, but how would that hold up tonight? If they followed the same schedule he and Jack had, they’d be locked in a room with a Digimon and told to kill it one after another later on and…_  
  
_Kouki wasn’t sure what he wanted to see in their expressions the next morning. Probably the same kind of thing that had been on his face the day after, but that would mean they’d gone through something horrible. But the alternatives? Could he really look at either of them the same way if they kept acting the way they were now, even after having killed someone? Or worse, what if they were like Jack, and showed what they were actually like before trying to fake being nice again?_  
  
_He shot a glance at the door. He knew that on the other side, Jack was repeatedly obliterating dummies at ridiculous speeds without even paying attention, his eyes clearly looking at something other than what was in front of him. He’d been doing it since he got up, which was much earlier than normal given that he’d been at it for a while before the other three had finished breakfast. Kouki wasn’t sure what was going on in his head, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know._  
  
_With a shudder, he pulled his thoughts away and resumed doing something similar himself. He wasn’t allowed to use his Champion form again just yet – from what he’d been told, he’d have plenty of space for flying practise tomorrow, or maybe later today ‘if things went particularly well’._  
  
_Considering what ‘things going particularly well’ probably meant, Kouki hoped it would be tomorrow._  
  


* * *

  
_Ivan, despite the impression he liked to give, was anything but stupid. You couldn’t be a mercenary paid highly enough to support a family for any real length of time if you were. People tended to be much more open around someone they thought was an idiot, even if they didn’t do it consciously – a person’s body language was often more than capable of telling him things that only impractical amounts of professionalism, persuasion, or coercion would have made them share._  
  
_He saw through the facades the others had put up, Nanami around her anxiety and Jack and Kouki around what looked like a combination of extreme stress, guilt, and despair. He knew that it was the look of someone who’s realised that they’re in over their head with no easy way out – he’d seen it often enough early on, both in his colleagues and in the mirror. He didn’t like that there was so little he could do about it, but that was how it was. He couldn’t do much more than smile and keep up his own facade of being nice and friendly, not without tipping his hand. And he couldn’t let himself do that._  
  
_He wanted to help them. Much like he’d wanted to help everyone he’d met over the years that had needed it. But letting his mask slip meant risking his family._  
  
_So he chatted amicably during meals, and played the part of the absentminded friendly idiot. Because _nothing_ – not his conscience, not his colleagues’ mental health, not whatever Kurata would have him doing - was worth losing them._  
  


* * *

  
It was coming up on dinnertime, and I was stuck in an incredibly irritating catch-22.  
  
Roughly half an hour ago, I’d stumbled onto the part of the Gizumon’s code that let it act as a Digivice at its lowest level. It was an interface, with an entirely different, black-boxed set of files that seemed to contain a digitised Digivice iC. In theory, all I needed to do to achieve the goal of never having to be human again was to work out which parts were for channelling the DNA Charge into the Digivice section and do something with that – connect it to an interface on my wrist, like Dorumon had on their foreheads, perhaps. In practice, however, in order to do that, I needed to see the relevant pieces of code running. Which meant having the DDS open – something I could only do as a Digimon – while using the Digivice – something I could only do as a human.  
  
The steadily-increasing pace and ferocity of the dummies’ destruction was testament to how frustrating it was. I’d have loved to go poking around in it, but without being able to feed it a DNA Charge I probably wouldn’t get anything useful out of it and the chances of me breaking something…  
  
I slumped my shoulders and glared at the last remaining dummy of the current batch. No. The chance of breaking something may be small, but the consequences would be terrible at best and the chances of gaining anything useful were even smaller still.  
  
Fortunately, imagining that the last dummy had been wearing Kurata’s face when I obliterated it before being called to dinner gave me enough catharsis that I could keep up my facade through the announcement afterwards.  
  


* * *

  
_Kouki tried not to let himself visibly droop as his fears gained another small piece of evidence. Jack had been worryingly tense for most of dinner, but a few moments after Kurata walked in he visibly relaxed._  
  
_He took a deep breath and forced his thoughts away from that dark path when Kurata started talking. Suspicions about Jack or not, he needed to pay attention if he wanted any chance of getting out of this situation any time soon._  
  
_“Good news, everyone. Earlier today, an important operation concluded decidedly in our favour and as a result, once this evening’s special activities are over with we’ll be moving to a base where you’ll have much more freedom to experiment with and get a handle on your Champion-level forms. Up until now, you’ve been restrained by the need for secrecy and containment that comes from operating in a city-based facility, but fortunately, this new base in the Digital World has no such restrictions.”_  
  
_Oh. So that’s what they’d meant. The feeling of dread that crept up on him at the fact that whatever it was had gone well was only reinforced by the fact that, when he saw it on his way out, Jack’s smile didn’t reach his eyes anymore._  
  


* * *

  
I lay in my new bed, unable to sleep. My new ‘room’ consisted of a large tent roughly the size of my old room, with roughly the same furnishings despite the new location. Most of what would have been the post-dinner training session had instead been taken up by packing everything up and getting it moved through Kurata’s portals before setting it up again on the other side. The Digital side.  
  
We were in the Digital World.  
  
Surprisingly enough, just arriving here had alleviated a number of little stresses and tensions throughout my body that I simply hadn’t noticed up until they were gone. It felt like I was more in control, like I didn’t have to worry. Like I was coming home after a long time away.  
  
I shuddered and twisted in my bed as my thoughts ran over it again. It made a certain amount of sense that I would feel that way, given that I’d spent more time as a Digimon than as a human recently, but logically it just felt wrong that I’d be comforted by the place I’d come to as part of a group trying to destroy it. The fact that I’d had fantasies for years of being in various versions of this place certainly wasn’t helping.  
  
And all of that wasn’t even touching on the fact that I hadn’t seen Ivan or Nanami since dinner, or the fact that even though my tent was off into the woods and technically not even in the camp anymore I could still feel the bone-deep revulsion driving me away from the various levels of Gizumon patrolling around, or the fact that I was pretty sure Merukimon was dead and the DATS team mind-wiped by this point, or any of the other things weighing on my mind.  
  
If it wasn’t for the fact that Kurata could track me and probably worse, I’d have run away. Just torn a hole in the side of my tent and sprinted off into the darkness before anyone could have stopped me. But he could. So I couldn’t run, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much I fantasised about it, or thought about doing it.  
  
I sighed. Comforting feelings or not, it was going to be a long night.  
  


* * *

  
It seemed the others had had trouble sleeping as well, if for different reasons. Judging by the guards’ muttering it seemed like the Digital World had basically the opposite effect on everyone else that it had had on me, which made a certain amount of sense considering the attitude its ruler had regarding humanity in general.  
  
Unfortunately, Nanami seemed to be a morning person regardless. A very enthusiastic morning person who seemed utterly oblivious to the bags under everyone’s eyes, including her own, as she went on and on about whatever happened to pass through her head. Even Ivan, usually her best listener, had more or less given up on keeping up with her. Though given the most recent subject matter, I couldn’t blame him.  
  
“And then it was like ‘Lightning Paw’ but I was like ‘nuh-uh’ and I dodged out of the way and nailed it with a Stun Shocker! And then it rolled back to its feet and it was like ‘Cat Laser’ and it shot a beam of light at me but I ducked under it and charged and I got hold of its neck because it tried to dodge around me but I had my little extra plugs waiting for it and then I zapped it until it was gone! And then the professor was all like…”  
  
_“She’s either hopelessly delusional or a total sociopath and I can’t tell which.”_  
  
I was idly but tiredly nodding along to her horrific monologue in the hopes that it’d make her finish sooner, Ivan was methodically making his way through his breakfast but otherwise all but unresponsive to the outside world, and based on how Kouki had his face in his hands except for the occasional pained glare, he was trying to either get just a little more sleep, set Nanami on fire with his mind, or both.  
  
The three of us breathed a sigh of relief when we were told that we could officially take our mornings as a rest period until we got used to getting up early in the Digital World. Apparently the “this world doesn’t want you here” feeling everyone else had was a known problem. Ivan and Kouki went back to their tents, I went to go nap in a tree as far away from the nearest Gizumon as I could get without leaving the base, and Nanami and her boundless morning person energy immediately went to go train.  
  
It didn’t take all that long for me to be as rested as I was going to get, what with the peaceful tranquillity, the lack of Gizumon in the area, and the sense of belonging – even if I was still a bit guilty over that.  
  
I evolved to BioGrowlmon and began to see just how much I could really do now that I wasn’t constrained by the warehouse. If I recalled correctly and had my place in the timeline straight, I had at least a day or two before DATS got their memories back, HQ blew up, and we’d have to fight them in the portal between the worlds.  
  
Surely I could flesh out my extremely bare-bones plan in that time. Given what I had at my disposal, I might not be able to convince the protagonist squad of anything just yet, but if I could delay the fight long enough for Samson to show up, keep everyone together long enough for me to convince Samson I’m on his side, – the fact that I know that Kudamon is a Royal Knight but haven’t told Kurata should help with that – and then use that to try to work out a heel-face turn, things should go relatively well from there.  
  
Confidence renewed, I threw myself into my training. I had the beginnings of a plan. How badly wrong could it possibly-  
  
I blinked. _Fuck._  
  


* * *

  
_Kurata watched a bank of screens, each showing a feed from one of his scouting Gizumon BASICs. Most were simply empty stretches of Digital World landscape, but one had managed to find its way into a meeting in a hidden mountain stronghold he certainly wouldn’t have found otherwise._  
  
_A large group of Digimon, mostly Champion-level but with a few Ultimates and Rookies here and there, were gathered in a literally cavernous hall of hewn stone, listening intently with increasingly horrified looks at the Taomon speaking at the top of the room. Judging from the murmurs he’d picked up on, she’d previously been a Baronmon, and had kept and nurtured the prophetic abilities Baronmon were known for even after her evolution._  
  
_Though it looked as though the discontented mutterings of the crowd were getting to her, as she burst out yelling after yet another demand._  
  
_“I don’t know! I don’t know what’s causing this, I don’t know why all of the futures I can see suddenly lead to death and ruin, that’s part of why I gathered everyone!” She sighed and collected herself, before continuing in a more subdued tone. “If… if nobody knows what’s causing this, then as far as I can see we only have two options left to us. If we stay here and try to hide, if we try to fight conventionally, if we try to run… if we stay within the known futures, it won’t work. We’ll die.”_  
  
_Kurata’s smirk grew as the crowd slowly realised what she was proposing. “If we want to have any chance whatsoever of surviving, we need to head straight into the unknown futures, and meet whatever is causing this disturbance head-on! There is no guarantee of our survival, true, but not doing so will result in our guaranteed death!”_  
  
_There was a moment of silence before the crowd was reduced to a chaotic uproar and Kurata couldn’t hold in his laughter anymore. After all, from the recordings his BASICs had sent him, this “disturbance” had shown up a few days ago, at almost the same time that his latest and strongest batch of forces had arrived in the Digital World. He wasn’t sure what it was about them that was causing this issue - given that all of the mercenaries had been to the Digital World before it seemed almost certain that it was related to the BioHybrids somehow, and wasn’t that a nice surprise, finding yet another use for them – but if it meant that this group and others like them would be drawn to them out of desperation, he certainly wasn’t going to complain._  
  
_Turning away from the monitors as the group started going over strategies to use and allies they could find – he could go over that later in more detail – he turned with a scowl to the report that he’d received only a few minutes ago. “Of _course_ those brats would manage to fight off the memory suppression after just a few days. The neuralyzers were rated for several _years_ of suppression, but given the track record these three have I should probably just be grateful they even lasted as long as they did.”_  
  
_He sighed. “Oh well. I suppose this is as good a first true field test for the BioHybrids as any.” He paused, then grinned. ”At this point… well, it’s not like I really _need_ DATS anymore. And if I don’t need them, then there’s no reason to keep their assets around any longer, is there? I wonder how much of a distraction I can make out of their precious Headquarters…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that marks the end of the currently fully written chapters as of 22/9/19. I'm working on Chapter 13 right now, but it's slow going. Hopefully the boost in feedback from posting it here as well will kick me into gear more.


	13. First Impressions

_Keenan and Falcomon rushed through the halls of DATS HQ, angrily searching for the man who had killed so many innocent Digimon. They'd already looked through all of the places they knew, and by this point they were just running through the back halls and storage rooms almost at random._

_When they found him, they almost couldn't believe it. What would he be doing back there? It felt almost too good to be true, a feeling that was proven right moments later when four shadowed figures, obviously Digimon, loomed out of the darkness behind him. Still, they couldn't just let him get away, not when he was right there, and the Digimon behind him couldn't be Mega level, they were too small. Crowmon had beaten other Ultimate level Digimon before, and they didn't even need to do that much, just get one good shot past the Digimon to hit the real monster standing next to them._

_It didn't work._

_It didn't work and one of them had taken Crowmon down to Falcomon with one good hit._

_It didn't work and the biggest one was looking at Keenan..._

_All Keenan could see was fire._

~S~S~S~

_“Honestly,”_ I reflected, looking around at the devastation I’d wrought on this poor, innocent bunch of trees, _“BioGrowlmon is really just a bigger BioGuilmon in a lot of ways.”_ Moving around was pretty much the same, though with more collateral damage if I wasn’t careful. The senses were way better, though since I was now somewhere around two stories tall if I stood up as tall as I normally could the effect wasn’t as pronounced as I’d have thought most of the time.

The attacks, meanwhile, were mostly the same way - surprisingly, I could still use my Rookie-level attacks, though even powered up to Champion level they were still less powerful than the new ones. Guil shot and Pyro Sphere became two different variations of Pyro Blaster (and left a nearby cliff face looking like someone dumped a modern art gallery in a volcano), Rock Breaker became Growl Claw and smashed a few trees into splinters without issue with each use, and Neck Stretcher seemed to have combined with Wild Scratch to make Dino Kick which resulted in both a new forest clearing made mainly of wood chippings mixed with sawdust and a very annoyed Kouki who’d had a near miss with a flying log and promptly flapped off to the other side of the base swearing loudly enough to drown out my awkward apology. Meanwhile, Howling did exactly what it said on the metaphorical tin and let me scream loud enough to be a bootleg dinosaur Banshee, while Dragon Spine was just as powerful as Growl Claw but used my tail instead.

Lastly of the ones I could actually use was Dragon Slash, which cut through trees like a hot knife through butter and was only slightly less effective when I threw the resulting blade rather than keeping it on my arm. Raiden Blade, however…

I flinched as I looked again at the resulting messages from trying to use it once.

[Error 403: Forbidden: Champion-level use of Digital Hazard]

[Warning: Digital Hazard Containment Damaged: 75% stability]

Raiden Blade seemed to be the Champion-level equivalent to Hazard Claw, and was therefore definitely in the ‘Last Resort Only’ bin. I wasn’t sure how much of the damage was from that one attack and how much was from all my Rookie-level attempts to use it, and I didn’t want to risk finding out in case it was too skewed towards the former.

Fortunately, I had plenty of other attacks I could use so long as I didn’t end up against someone out of my league I couldn’t run from or some other ridiculously dangerous thing. Even in a worst-case scenario, as long as I could manage to not immediately die, I could probably focus enough to get Raiden Blade working given how much more… eager… the little flame I now recognised as my Hazard seemed to be than it was before.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I got back to working on how to bend the plasma-stream version of Pyro Blaster mid-flight rather than just firing it in a straight line. I knew it was possible, since Growlmon definitely pulled it off in Tamers, but it was the biggest source of frustration I had at the moment, even with the extra frame of reference having the DDS going let me have. Well, the biggest source of frustration I could _do_ anything about, anyway.

~S~S~S~

_Kouki stared at Jack, coming back into camp as BioGrowlmon. Or rather, he stared at the thing around Jack’s head._

_He knew Jack had been working on something to do with fire. He’d seen some of it from his literal birds-eye view earlier. Apparently though, while he’d been working on flying and some lightning, Jack had been working on turning one of his attacks into a freaking _scarf_ made of fire that was only getting brighter as he kept breathing more life into it._

_Jack turned to look at him and blinked in surprise, and Kouki’s mind went blank with panic for a moment - _“Shit, did he figure me out?” - _but Jack looked down at his scarf and the moment passed._

_Of course, the moment he let himself relax Jack decided that wouldn’t be allowed. His ‘scarf’ unravelled into one of the massive pillars of fire he’d seen Jack throwing around earlier and corkscrewed off into the sky, more than far enough to have shot down any flying Digimon if there were any still in the sky. Kouki’s heart sank as he watched his escape plan get significantly harder right before his eyes, but he kept it off of his face._

_After the attack was gone, Jack reverted, and his parting words as he walked past Kouki, an obviously fake smile on his face, left Kouki struggling not to scream in frustration. “Impressive, right? Don’t worry, I’ve gotten very good with my aim today. Definitely won’t hit you if I notice you need some surface-to-air support; we’re on the same side after all.”_

_He took a long time to get to sleep that night, and his pillow was damp in the morning._

~S~S~S~

Breakfast on the second and third days in the Digital World was much the same as the first day, though thankfully Nanami had moved on from her horrifying murder of an innocent as a topic and jumped right into training, which was something the rest of us could sort of contribute to through our tiredness. We also seemed to be less tired each day, which helped. I’d asked about stationing the Gizumon a bit further away from my tent partway through the first day and surprisingly Kurata had indulged me, and the others seemed to be a bit more used to the ‘the entire world and everything in it wants you dead’ aura Yggdrasil was giving the place. Well, Nanami and Ivan were, Kouki was not only not improving much at all, he also seemed to be allergic to something in his tent with how red his eyes were in the mornings. He didn’t complain about it though, so I left the topic alone.

My own training, annoyingly, had more or less plateaued yesterday afternoon. As far as I could tell, I was about as good with BioGrowlmon now as I was with BioGuilmon, and improving on that seemed to just be a matter of routine and experience. Improving on things on the inside was even more frustrating; I hadn’t looked into my own code just yet since I didn’t want to risk changing it, and while looking at Guilmon’s code was interesting and gave me some insights into how natural Digimon fit together compared to the artificial Gizumon, as well as streamlining things a little in training, it didn’t help with my immediate problems. I still didn’t have a way around being tracked and by this point I was pretty sure that that code wasn’t going to be something I’d actually have access to.

Then, after the afternoon lunch break, came the news I’d been both looking forward to and dreading. Kurata sent a guard to collect us rather than letting us go back to training, and collected us in the same area we’d arrived in. “Well, team, I’d say you’ve all made some excellent progress these last few days, really impressive stuff. It’d be nice if we could get some real Digimon for you to train against, but we’re still working on that. Fortunately, we have something just as good to do today, if in a different way. Your first actual mission!” He shrugged, ignoring our reactions - my and Ivan’s sharpened focus, Nanami’s excited, quiet squeal, and Kouki’s shaky grin - and went on. “Now, we’re _probably_ not going to see actual combat worth the name for this mission, but you’re coming along anyway just in case we do. The mission itself is pretty simple, honestly; there’s an organisation in the Real World called DATS that’s been trying to keep the Digital World secret and keep the power of Digimon for themselves. I’ve managed to infiltrate them, but they have useful data that we need and that we can’t let them keep, and I can’t get it without giving myself away. They also have some infrastructure for themselves which, thanks to my recent innovations, would be a bad idea to let them keep, as well as some problematic prisoners, all of which we need destroyed as soon as possible, and I can hardly do that by myself. That’s where you come in!” He grinned widely, looking genuinely enthusiastic about all of this despite having just tried to condemn Keenan and all of DATS’s partners to death, and it was all I could do to keep the resulting growl quiet enough that he didn’t seem to notice it.

“We’ll be heading to their headquarters and only current base of operations momentarily. I’m going to steal all of their data and you four will make sure no-one and nothing can stop me, and once I’m done you’ll destroy the prisoners, their only copies of the data, and heck, if we have time maybe we can bring their entire building crashing down as well. You may also be reassigned if some of them show up to the building while I work, since plans rarely survive contact with the enemy, even ones as simple as this. Are you all clear on your duties?”

The assorted nods and calls of “Yes Sir!” were apparently enough for him, as he turned around and pressed a button on a remote he pulled out of nowhere. A portal opened, and just like that-

_“Back to the Human World. I really hope I don’t screw this up.”_

~S~S~S~

Just about the moment we got back, it was pretty clear things weren’t going well for the guards Kurata had left behind while we were in the Digital World. There’d been a fire in the cell they were holding the DATS team’s Digimon partners in, and they’d escaped the building in the confusion.

Well, _most_ of them, anyway.

“I wonder what exactly he thinks he’s going to accomplish? You weren’t even _here_ when he started, Professor.”

Kurata let out a small chuckle at Nanami’s question, all of us seeing Keenan and Falcomon running through the emptied halls of DATS HQ on CCTV calling for Kurata to come fight them, the guards having evacuated back to the Digital World camp shortly after we arrived. “Well, a Digimon he looked up to tried attacking the Real World and died and he blames me for it, so he’s probably not thinking too straight right now.”

It was all I could do to keep looking at the screens as I growled at that, rather than at Kurata. Especially when his expression changed to one of amusement as he looked around. “Although, if he really wants a fight that badly, I say we can give it to him. He’s one of the prisoners we came here to deal with anyway. And if he doesn’t realise I’m not alone, well…” He let out one if his ear-grating laughs as he headed for the door, motioning for the four of us to follow him. “What he doesn’t know will definitely hurt him.”

~S~S~S~

It didn’t take long for us to set up in the storage room, all of us fully evolved. It was a bit cramped, but it wouldn’t take long one way or another, and from the camera feed Kurata had on his tablet we knew Keenan was coming this way.

I blinked in surprise a few times when Keenan entered the room. I barely even heard the over-dramatic exchange between him and Kurata. I hadn’t really thought about it before, though it hit me a little with Kouki and Nanami, but…

_“Keenan is… just a kid. He’s _ten years old_ for crying out loud, this is…”_

I was snapped out of my shock when the newly-evolved Crowmon attacked Kurata. For a moment, I was tempted to block the wing Kouki was bringing down to protect him, let the attack through. There was no way he’d survive it, it was an Ultimate-level attack and he was no Damon.

But I hesitated, and the moment passed even as I mentally cursed myself for it, my displeasure making itself known with a low rumble throughout the room while Kouki’s counterattack brought Falcomon crashing down. Kurata, the bastard, laughed. “Well, BioGrowlmon is certainly proving to be an accurate name today! Why don’t you show this little brat what else you can do, prove your bite is so much worse than your bark?”

I stared at Keenan, both of us frozen in place.

_“…I've been working on this for most of the last three days.”_

Fire built in my throat. Keenan didn’t move.

_“It’s… easy. All I have to do is miss. He’s small…”_

The fire built to the point I couldn’t have held it back even if I’d changed my mind. Keenan’s eyes widened, and he rushed to grab his injured friend.

_“…I… I really hope I don’t put this too close…”_

The fire was unleashed. A burning white beam of heat flew across the room quickly even as I tried to slow it down, and crashed through the doorway at the end leaving a gaping, glowing hole through the next few rooms in that direction, smoke billowing everywhere.

For a few moments, all I could hear was the crackling of the fires I’d started and my blood pounding in my ears.

_“Is he… did I…”  
"_ _Please no…”_

After what felt like an eternity, footsteps became audible from the corridor, and two female voices started talking from around the corner.

“Keenan! Falcomon!”

There was a brief pause, the smoke clearing a bit as the fires began to die down and the voices gave twin sighs of relief.

“…They’re alive. Come on, we need to get them out of here.”

“Yeah. What the heck managed to do _this_, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Megumi, but I don’t think we want to meet it.”

As their footsteps retreated and I tried not to breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t just kill a child on the orders of a madman, I became acutely aware that said madman was scowling at me, and the other BioHybrids were looking my way as well.

He sounded very irritated when he started talking, which in almost any other context would be cause for celebration but in this one just made me nervous. “Jack. You and I both know that you’ve hit faster targets from farther away than that before. How could you possibly not get a direct hit on either of them?”

“Uh…” I cleared my throat, partially to buy time to think and partially because it was actually a bit rough after holding the attack for so long. “I… well… I’m not _entirely_ sure, but based on where it ended up hitting… probably the recoil from overpowering the move like that?”

Kurata’s flat expression as he stared felt like I’d dropped the bottom out of my stomach, and my ears and tail felt slightly odd. “The recoil. On an attack I know you’ve been practicing for days now at all different intensities, and would thus be intimately familiar with even if overpowered. That recoil.”

My mouth started moving before my brain caught up with it and tried to think things through, stumbling over the half-formed words even as the others’ stares grew even more disbelieving. “Well, I, uh, when I practiced, Professor, I was- I was aiming out in the open, and that meant I had plenty of room- plenty of space to correct my aim mid-shot. Always- always at far away targets. I’ve- I didn’t think to try shots that strong at that short a range, because I thought- I figured I wouldn’t need to any time soon, and-“

Kurata shook his head, looking disappointed and exasperated as he raised an arm to cut me off. “If you hadn’t practiced with it, then why would you use it _now_?”

I had a flash of inspiration, and while it made me sick to my stomach to say it, I managed to get the words out in a meek voice. “I just… wanted to impress you, sir.”

~S~S~S~

_“I just… wanted to impress you, sir.”_

“It really is impressive,”_ Kurata mused internally, _“Just how much a two-story monster of a digital tyrannosaurus can look like a kicked puppy.”

_His usually-stone-faced, stoic instrument of terror and destruction was cowering before him. Not, apparently, because he was scared of being deleted, or because he was affected by being ordered to kill a child, but because Kurata might not be _impressed_._

_It was all Kurata could do to keep some semblance of a stern expression on his face and a firm tone in his voice as he internally laughed hysterically and cheered in glee. “Hmmm. Well, too late now; they’re moving already and you can’t really have mobility and stealth together.” A snap decision, then. “Ivan, Nanami, follow them. Don’t engage unless you find where they’re planning on going, or if you have no other choice, and don’t draw attention to yourselves. Understood?”_

_The mercenary and the ingenue nodded in acknowledgement, and reverted to human in a flash before making their way towards the front of the building. Once they were gone, he turned back to the dinosaur who still had his wing-like ears pressed to his head and his tail between his legs, and sighed._

_“Well, don’t worry, Jack. You’ll have a chance to make up for this… hiccup, soon enough. Just make sure that it doesn’t happen again, alright? I’ll be much more impressed by a successful mission than by one failed because you tried too much too soon.”_

_His dinosaur nodded and visibly sagged, shuddering in relief. After a moment to compose himself, he was back to the normal terrifying instrument of death he usually was - though now much more reassuring to have at his back._

_He turned, smiling, and motioned for his minions to follow him out as he left through a side entrance to the room that _wasn’t_ currently on fire. “Come on. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”_


	14. Breakthrough

After leaving the storeroom, Kouki, Kurata, and I headed back to the main room with the Digital Dive, Kurata talking to Ivan and Nanami on a headset as he went. Miki and Megumi seemed to be having trouble getting out of the building with Keenan - from the sound of things, having a few rooms obliterated and set on fire had set off some kind of security system lockdown and getting around the results was slowing them down a lot. Fortunately for everyone, Kurata told them not to engage - the hallways were too small for Champion-level BioHybrids, but not for DATS’ partners’ Champion-level forms, and Kurata had no interest in giving them anything like a fair fight.

Once we reached the Dive room, Kurata headed for a back room with an odd, faint smell coming from it. When he opened the door, I sniffed at the air and got a lot of scents - I recognised more than a few of them, even if smelling them this clearly from across the room was weird. Metal, some of it hot. Plastic, the same way. Dust as well, and an odd one I could swear I’d smelled before, and recently, but I couldn’t tell where.

He smiled. “Ah, good. The servers are still running. That’ll make cleaning out their systems much simpler.” He moved into what was apparently the server room, and pulled up a screen inside, putting a USB stick in the side of it. “This might take a few minutes, kids. Just stand guard and make sure no-one gets in here in case they show up - I’d _like_ to think no-one will, but I’d have liked to think that those irritating children wouldn’t have been able to throw off both the neuralyzers’ effects and my Gizumon either and look how that turned out.”

I nodded, and Kouki did as well after a few moments. Kouki went to sit in the Commander’s chair, swivelling it idly as he fidgeted with some pieces of stationary he’d taken from the desk. He did make sure to keep an eye out, to his credit, though half the time he seemed to be eyeing me rather than the door for some reason. Recognising that I had better senses, maybe?

In any case, I’d moved over to where Miki and Megumi usually sat, and judging by the extra spaces all with their own scents a few other people had desks in the area as well. I was a bit more active than Kouki, pacing around the area, frowning and sniffing at the air to try and figure out what the odd scent could be and where I’d smelt it before. After a little under a minute, I noticed there were some traces of the smell around the area I was in as well - quickly tracking it to the most concentrated source just left me with my nose pressed to one of the desk drawers there. Opening it, snapping the lock easily, I blinked a few times in confusion, cocking my head to the side a bit as I tried to figure out what was causing it.

From the stickers and notebooks, it looked like this was Yoshi’s desk. I rooted through the drawer of stuff for a moment, pushing filled notebooks and random knick-knacks out of the way until I found what I was looking for. Holding it up out of the drawer confirmed that it was the main source of the smell, though I was still a bit confused. I’d have thought it would be some kind of food based on how appetising the smell was, not…

Kouki’s somewhat confused voice broke in. “What… are you doing?”

My somewhat-absent reply of “Trying to figure out why this smells like food-” was cut off by Kurata coming back, a smug look on his face ruining the calm I’d managed to build for myself. “Well, kids, I have good news and bad news. Not a lot of bad news, though, just an inconvenience for you: The DATS team still have two options to try to get to the Digital World to stop us; the Digital Dive at the front of the room here and the original portal setup the Criers made way back when. The one here isn’t an issue, but just in case they manage to slip away from the others long enough to get the other portal open, you’ll be standing guard for a while.”

He blinked once, momentarily thrown off by the sight of what I was holding, but after a questioning glance, he shook his head and carried on. “Now, I have my Space Oscillation Devices, but while they can get to _somewhere_ in the Digital World, they can’t be directed very well. The original portal has a fixed destination and transit, though, and this one here can be aimed. So what’s going to happen now, is that I’m going to activate the Dive here with some specific co-ordinates to intercept the other portal’s path, and then you’re going to go through - you’ll know when to stop, you can’t miss it - and you’re going to wait on the other path either until the DATS team come along, in which case you are going to destroy them, or until I send a Gizumon to pick you up if Nanami and Ivan can destroy the portal before DATS can use it.” He took another glance at what I was holding and sighed before plugging in another USB to one of the computers by the Dive. “You’ll be in there a while, so I don’t mind if you want to bring some snacks along for yourself. There’s a vending machine just down the hall, and there’s no reason not to just smash it and take what you want since we’ll be destroying the building as you leave anyway.”

Kouki had perked up and headed for the door at the mention of snacks, but made a small choking noise and stumbled at the mention of destruction. “Uh, wait, what?”

There was a brief awkward silence, then Kurata gave me an approving glance before turning to Kouki and scowling. A moment later I realised I hadn’t reacted to hearing that we were going to blow up the building and tried to suppress a flinch. Sure, I’d known ahead of time because I’d seen the show, but I needed to be more careful about letting on about any future knowledge. To Kurata at least, anyway, I fully planned to spill the beans to DATS the moment I got a chance.

Kurata had finished castigating Kouki and explaining that after cleaning out their servers there was nothing DATS HQ had that we could use that was better than what we had, but that it was almost everything that DATS would have access to and had started explaining how the building would be destroyed by the time I’d thought that through for myself. Though… wait, what did he just…

“…could use the detonator, but if you want to show off that _oh-so-impressive control_ you’ve been working on with your fire, Jack, there’s no reason I can see why you couldn’t, say, build some up and delay it from actually hitting anything until I give you the signal. Is there?”

I froze for a moment. _“…Well, this isn’t exactly going to help my reputation with DATS, but after Keenan this is small potatoes. And it’s going down anyway… might as well do it myself and suck up to the bastard a bit more.”_

After a moment’s thought, I nodded. “I should probably be able to do that. Worst-case scenario, you still have the detonator, anyway.”

He smiled, and I was very glad that the instinctive bared teeth I showed in a spike of rage was close enough to a smile for him to seem to ignore it, the Dive opening a portal rather than its usual teleport as he reached around behind himself. “Good, good. Well, I’ll just-“ He frowned, looking at one of the camera screens, still up from where we’d watched Keenan earlier and now showing two groups moving towards each other outside the building. “Oh? Well, look who finally showed up. You know, I think I’ll take this chance to really rub it in that they’ve lost.” He shook his head, moving to the exit. “Start building up that fire, and be ready to blow the building and get through the Dive on my command.”

I nodded as he went, and scowled as I had to go back through human form on the way to BioGrowlmon again. Turning back to BioGuilmon directly like I had to get out of the storeroom was easy at this point, but I hadn’t figured out how to go up a level without involving humanity just yet despite my efforts. I didn’t Digivolve right away, though, as my right hand caught my eye. Specifically, my very noticeably red right hand, lighter on my palm and much darker on the middle of the back and where it met my wrist.

Kouki came back in from the hall after a sound of broken glass to see me frowning at it, holding in his arms what looked like all of the vending machine’s packets of snacks. We stared at each other blankly for a few seconds before I shook my head and motioned to the Dive. “You go on ahead. You don’t need to stay here for this and it’s probably safer if you don’t.”

He looked like he wanted to say something, but just nodded and kept moving as I summoned my DNA Charge and evolved again, relishing the feeling of not being pathetic again. On a whim, before starting the build-up I took the item I’d found, still in its case, along with a few other things that had the same oddly appetising smell - which, now that I checked, was gone from the dark server room oddly enough - and piled them in front of the Dive so it would be easy for me to grab them.

Shortly afterwards, DATS HQ exploded violently, a torrent of fire bursting out of the roof and then curving around to come blasting back down through it, as Kurata made his taunting escape through a Space Oscillation Device portal and the DATS team ran.

~S~S~S~

_Yoshi wasn’t at the head of the group as they headed through the portal to the Digital World. She was at the back with Keenan, actually - it’d been hell for him to get his parents to accept that he was needed in the Digital World, especially as injured as he still was, and they only relented on condition that the entire rest of the group look out for him until he was better. Sure, this was probably going to be the easiest part of the trip now that they were through the portal, especially since gravity didn’t mean much here so he wouldn’t need to walk, but he was visibly still in pain even if he was doing his best to ignore it._

_Out of nowhere, the group stopped moving. Yoshi looked forward to see what caused it, and ended up just staring silently in disbelief for a few seconds. There was a kid there with a Digimon, both of whom seemed to have been snacking while they were out here if the scattered junk food packets around the kid and, more worryingly, what looked like torn-up computer casings around the Digimon, were any indication. They even still had packets in their hands, the kid popping his bag while his partner slid… another…_

_She didn’t mean to interrupt Thomas asking the kid what they were doing there, but she couldn’t help herself. “Is he _eating_ my _CD collection_!?”_

_The kid raised an eyebrow, looking incredulously between her and his partner, still crunching her favourite music without any guilt… or anything at all, really… on its face. “Uh, probably? Why are you asking me? Ask him.”_

_She raised an eyebrow, not taking her eyes off of them. There was something odd about that Digimon… “Well, he’s your partner, so he’s your responsibility! And-” She was cut off by the kid making a strangled sound like he was a cat she’d stepped on, his expression absolutely horrified, while the Digimon quietly choked on her CDs._

_The unfamiliar high-pitched laughter coming from behind the group just made things worse. “Oh, no, Jack’s his own partner! The rest of us are too, though not quite as much.”_

_Yoshi turned to look, barely having time to see a grown man in tightly-fit combat clothes and a girl around Thomas’ age wearing what looked like the most impractical outfit for a fight she could think of before Marcus yelled and things _really_ went wrong. _

~S~S~S~

The breakthrough came frustratingly late, but certainly better late than never. We’d come through the interdimensional void, the odd swirling patterns around us fizzling out as the gate was destroyed behind us leaving us with only the other tunnel to see, besides some distant background lights. Given that we hadn’t stopped moving just because the tunnel broke down around us, it didn’t take long for us to slam into the other one, passing into it easily but not out of it again on the other side.

Once we were there, we mostly just floated in the near-silence for a while, Kouki working his way through the dozens of bags of snacks he’d brought while I multitasked on both trying to find a way to Digivolve while digital and idly figuring out why the computers and the CD case smelled like food. It didn’t take long to figure out that only certain parts of them did - mainly the hard drives, but some other bits here and there did as well. Once that happened, I let out a laugh at having actually figured _something_ out, even if it wasn’t the main thing I was working on.

Tearing through the bunch of computers I’d brought along in search of the parts of them that stored apparently-edible _data_ was more than enough to keep my hands and nose busy while I got ever more frustrated at not being able to figure out how Digivolving worked. I had the DDS screen open in front of me, the Digivice components in their black-box inches away and yet inaccessible. I had my BioHybrid DNA Charge summoned, flickering it on and off both inside my head and on my actual hand to see if there was any reaction from the parts I could see, and I was getting nowhere fast.

Growling as my frustration mounted, I lashed out, punching the Digivice on-screen with the mental DNA Charge, yelling mentally. “Just fucking _take it_!”

I have to say, of all the things I _expected_ to work, that was decidedly not one of them.

Still, as I blinked in surprise from my Champion-level vantage point and Kouki choked on his snacks, I certainly wasn’t complaining. Just to make sure it would work more than once, I Digivolved back and forth a few times, actually grinning once it kept working. I settled back into BioGuilmon form afterwards, but there was a weight off my shoulders. Not a big one, sure, but a weight lifted all the same.

I went back to shredding the computers’ metal frames apart to get at the good bits with gusto, ignoring the odd look Kouki was giving me. It was close enough to a glare that I figured he was just annoyed I’d surprised him, or jealous that I’d done another thing he couldn’t, and left him to it. I certainly wasn’t going to explain it, he’d taken a weakling like Impmon - or BioImpmon, anyway - and actually done some impressive damage with it, there was no way I was going to give a blood knight like him something he could use to trick his opponents into thinking he was harmless for a surprise attack.

I’d finally worked my way around to the book of CDs I’d taken from Yoshi’s desk when DATS showed up, Ivan and Nanami hot on their tails. I’d decided long since then to sandbag this fight, and it wasn’t like even their Ultimate-level partners could do anything that would hurt-

“Well he’s your partner, so he’s your responsibility!”

I didn’t hear anything after that, my train of thought thoroughly derailed as I choked on a CD. _“Hah. What? No. _Fuck_ no. Nope.”_

I cleared my throat and shook my head to clear it just in time to see Marcus and Kouki punch each other, each summoning their DNA Charges. I had a split second to see that Kouki’s looked like it was straining at the edges, trying to go beyond Champion to Ultimate level, before he used it. Ivan’s and Nanami’s looked similar, though I couldn’t see them quite as clearly. _“I guess we’re skipping the exposition to go right to the fight, then?”_

Summoning my own, I slammed it into the middle of my chest for lack of any actual Digivice to receive it or any other gestures to do in the real world while I slammed it into the Digivice in my mind. Meaning something entirely different from what those around me probably thought I did, I growled, trying not to flinch at the look Keenan gave me.

“Let’s get this over with.”


End file.
